


Under the Hood

by hellhoundtheory



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe- No Supernatural, Human Castiel, M/M, Mechanic Dean Winchester, mechanic!Dean, monk!castiel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-19
Updated: 2017-11-14
Packaged: 2017-12-20 18:11:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 47,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/890289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellhoundtheory/pseuds/hellhoundtheory
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel and Dean are hurtling down separate paths. They always have been, but Castiel the novice monk and Dean the local mechanic have had one thing in common since their college days: They want new paths. The ones their fathers set out for them were never enough, and they knew it from the start. But now that they've taken those first steps down the road, will they be able to turn back?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Happy Enough

The water seared down his throat. Castiel was parched and it reminded him of his first drink of alcohol, a silly college dare. He chuckled to himself and took another sip.

His first and last drink. 

Paranoia sharp as ever, Castiel continued to look over his shoulder, worried that one of the brothers would somehow come out of seclusion and see him. But Castiel was visiting his family. They wouldn’t suspect anything of loyal, faithful, puppy-dog Castiel. 

It was past ten, the night air cooling the bar as more patrons entered, bringing with them the bright tones of their voices and the chime of the bell over the door. He hadn’t spoken a word yet, hadn’t broken his vow. Technically his vows were merely on a trial level, but after ten o’clock and before breakfast was time for silence, contemplation. It had been three months of postulancy since he had uttered a word in that time.

Now his trial period was up, however, and he was supposed to enter the noviciate. Two years more of prayer and Lectio divina. At least no one at the monastery had the name Castiel. He might not have been able to stand the monotony if he suddenly found himself with a different name accompanying his tonsure. Castiel rubbed his hands through his mop of hair absently, knowing it would soon be mostly gone. It wasn’t required by the monastery that he undertake the monastic tonsure in any sense. No, it was required by his father, whose brother undertook it and his uncle before him. Every middle son in the Milton family did it. It was expected for every middle son to be a prudish virgin and look like a medieval friar.

The only unexpected element of life Castiel was allowed was that he could practice carpentry at the monastery. Unfortunately, that was a perfectly normal pursuit for monks and didn’t cause his family to find any disappointment in their perfect child.

He wished the water was a real drink.

Truly, he loved life at the monastery. Prayer was quiet and wholesome. Even if religion had technically been forced on him, Castiel was devout and enjoyed expressing his relationship with God through prayer and contemplation. But sometimes the bell would toll for prayer time and it felt like a death march to leave the warm sawdust and the feeling of home lingering in the woodshop. 

Still he would genuflect. He would let his thoughts focus on God or being humble. Because it was expected.

What was not expected, however, is the sound of someone pulling a stool up to sit beside him. 

“Whiskey, neat,” Castiel’s gaze focused on the two finger motion used to order the drink, the roughness of the hands, the grit under the broad, flat fingernails, the grease smudge creeping up the tableau of the man’s wrist.

“It’s been awhile, Cas.” 

Finally, Castiel dragged his eyes up to see who was addressing him. It was a wonder he hadn’t recognized him immediately. Dean Winchester had always been handsome, but the rich cadence of his voice had dropped another few notes, and his youthful good looks had matured to reveal a—not unattractive—military strictness to his jaw. Castiel wondered how _he_ must look to his old friend.

“It has been, Dean,” He holds out his hand for a shake and receives it, firm grip and warm hands making his water seem very alcoholic as a flush crept up his neck, “What brings you back?” Castiel remembered all their hopes of leaving town, knowing if anyone could get out, it would be Dean and his stubborn streak. 

“Never left,” Dean shrugged in an elegant movement of his shoulders, with a sip of whiskey as it arrives before him. 

“Really?” Castiel frowned, the Dean of old had plans outside of small-town Lawrence and the will to achieve them, “Well, I’m not one to talk. I didn’t either.” 

“Yeah. It’s all well and good to talk about change during Psych 101,” Dean bit out, “But reality’s a bitch.” Another swallow of whiskey went down Dean’s gullet. Castiel wondered how he can drink the stuff. 

“I hear that.” With a sigh, Castiel took a drink, not even pretending the water was the least bit alcoholic. Dean knew him too well to fall for that.

Dean had given him his first drink on an uneventful Friday night, while they commiserated over their psychology project and demanding fathers instead of partying as was Dean’s wont. Castiel smiles at the memory. They were so full of hope. Times were simpler. 

“Did you—” Dean pointed at his own head and makes a scissors motion. He must have been wondering whether Castiel has taken his vows yet. He had been a Theology major and Dean had been a Mechanical Engineering major in their time at Kansas University, and Psych 101 had seemed like an easy and interesting A to the both. They talked about their dreams, their hopes, their parents’ hopes being forced on them. They had planned their escape together; then they slowly had drifted apart to follow the roads created for them by their families. 

Looking down in shame he intoned, “No, but I’m to do that in a few weeks. I get... what you might call vacation time to ‘mull over’ the decision first and see my family.”

“What, do you never get to see them again after you take your vows or something?” Dean chortled it as if the possibility was an absurdity. 

A laugh bubbled out of Castiel’s throat, probably more from neurosis than humor, “Oh, no, of course not. We all, novices and monks alike, are allowed time away from the monastery. If,” He corrected himself, “When I take my vows I could leave the monastery for extended periods giving retreats or working at another parish. I’ll be perfectly free…”

“But not free to sow your wild oats?” Dean joked with a conspiratorial wink. 

“I think our project on humans as sexual beings—which I still resent—would give you an indication of my opinion on wild oat sowing.” Though Castiel didn’t find his utter humiliation at being sick one day of classes and finding Dean had chosen the most uncomfortable topic available to be very funny, Dean’s face split in a charming grin.

The smile crinkled at the corners of Dean’s eyes and Castiel realized with a pang that he had missed the easy companionship Dean provided. They should have taken more classes together. 

“So, I’ll assume that means you’ve been sowing yours?” Castiel didn’t want to talk about himself, and this seemed the easiest segue. Dean ordered a second whiskey.

“I mean, I get out every once in a while. You know how I was in college. I’m a simple man. Cars, booze, and women: preferably in that order.” Clearly, talking about himself wasn’t something Dean enjoyed either. Castiel changed the subject.

“Well, what have you been doing, if you haven’t gone off and chased your dreams of building cars?”

“Fixing them, mostly. I work at my dad’s shop, the family business and all that. I’m saving up to go back and take some of the classes I need to get that kind of job, but Sam’s going to Stanford and… well, it’s slow. But I’m happy.” Dean said the last as if he were swallowing a bitter pill, quickly finishing the whiskey and moving onto his third. 

“Yeah. Happy.” Castiel’s speech was flavored with same resignation, tying his tongue with the taste. The only time he was happy was in the woodshop. He expected Dean felt the same about working on cars, even though Dean’s real ambition was in engineering them. Castiel remembered his hope of opening his own woodshop. Neither of them really achieved their ambitions.

“I can drink to that,” Dean deadpanned. Castiel hadn’t realized how fast Dean was running through his drinks. He hadn’t even realized that Dean had breached the uncomfortable silence by clinking their glasses together. 

“So, you gonna have a real drink or is this gonna be like Ruby’s party?” He gestured to Castiel’s drink with his own.

Castiel glared at him, “I think you forget that Ruby’s party was right after I convinced you not to go to Victor’s party and you got me drunk for revenge.”

“You were a cuddly drunk, you bastard,” Dean clapped Castiel on the back as he chokes on his water, “Dude, I’m serious: I had to sleep on the floor.”

“I’m sure if I could remember I would be able to tell you that I wasn’t that bad.”

Dean cracked up like he hadn’t laughed in centuries. As Dean’s lungs heave, he put his elbow on the bar and stared at his erstwhile unaffected companion; Castiel offers him a smile. He was happy to see Dean look so carefree, even if it was just over an embarrassing college flashback. The few lines showing on Dean’s face didn’t look happy, and if Castiel could give him a smile, well, that was as pleasant a way to do God’s work as any.

“Come on, Cas. Are you really gonna cut off all that hair?” Dean’s eyes were locked on his. The question was probably deeper than Castiel wanted to delve, despite seeming innocuous.

“Are you really going to order a fourth whiskey?” Dean was mid-gesture, beckoning over the bartender. He slowly put his hand down and gave Cas a curious look. 

“No. I really should get back to my apartment.” _Not home,_ Castiel thinks, feeling a similar ache in his heart for Dean. His cell at the monastery didn’t make him feel at home either. Then again, that’s probably because they still carried on the antiquated tradition of calling the sparse rooms ‘cells’. 

He looked at his empty water and the establishment crawling with strangers and realized Dean was the only thing making it tolerable, “Walking or driving?” He asked.

“I’m not parking my baby around a bunch of drunks when my apartment is just a few blocks away,” Dean grumbled. Castiel raised an eyebrow to him in response even as a contradicting smile began to tug at the corners of his mouth. Dean really hadn’t changed all that much. Nor had Castiel, for that matter.

Castiel remembered Dean’s almost fetishized love for his honking old classic muscle car. It was a thing of beauty, to be sure, but Castiel didn’t think any car was worth that kind of upkeep. His parents gave him a barely-used Toyota Corolla at the end of high school and he hadn’t needed another car since. 

He probably wouldn’t need another, given the way his all-encompassing lack of rebellion was going.

“I’ll walk you home.” Castiel knew he was just delaying the inevitable, that he would have to see his family. 

“Aw, you gonna kiss me goodnight like a good gentleman?” They were halfway out the door and Dean’s mocking coos gleaned them a few stray glances from the customers about to go into the bar. Dean didn't seem to care, and Castiel affected the same nonchalance. Leaving the dingy atmosphere of the bar gave Castiel some peace, like he no longer had to look over his shoulder, and the chilly air invigorated him. 

“I’m not the one who had the whiskey here.”

“Yeah, yeah. Alright macho monk.” Dean walked perfectly straight after drinking three whiskeys in under an hour. Castiel probably wouldn’t have made it out the door after one.

Somehow Dean’s tolerance to heavy liquor was more worrying than endearing. 

Neither of them spoke for a time as they walked side-by-side down the sidewalk. It was comfortable, even if Castiel was reminded that he shouldn’t really have been talking at all during that time. Castiel hardly thought God would be mad that he enjoyed conversation with a friend, though. The comfortable silence stretched half a block as the sounds of the small town going to sleep filtered quietly through the air. Dean, with a sigh, decided to breach the silence. 

“Even if you were just sipping on H2O, why were you at a bar anyways? Hell, why were you at _that_ bar? Willy’s isn’t exactly homely, or even sanitary, for that matter.”

Castiel bit at his lip, a bad habit that caused him chapped lips, and chose to lie through his teeth, “I would tell you if I knew, but I really don’t.” 

It wasn’t that Castiel didn’t want to tell Dean how lost he was, but that he knew Dean was too. Why remind each other that they had failed at reclaiming their own lives? Dean was quiet for a moment, and Castiel thought that maybe Dean would leave it alone. No such luck.

“But there has to be some reason, Cas, even if it’s just that it was convenient,” Dean stopped him with a hand clamped around his forearm. Castiel hadn’t even realized he was walking faster to get away from the conversation. The world spins for a moment as he reels in his momentum.

“You’re really not going to leave this alone are you?” Castiel turned on Dean, a fire blazing in his eyes that he hadn’t known existed. What right had Dean to question him? Dean was probably just bored. Wanted to be any place that didn’t remind him that he was unhappy. Well boo-hoo. So did he. 

It didn’t make either of them any happier.

“No. If you really don’t want to say it. I will,” Dean almost looked like he was going to push, but Castiel’s ire didn’t leave his eyes, “Fine, whatever Cas. Just here to help.” 

_I don’t want your help. I didn’t ask for it. It’s not college anymore. We’re hopeless now._ Castiel wanted to say. Instead:

“I think I’m going to go now,” he sounded angry. Part of him was. His fist was clenched tight in the pocket of his khakis and his teeth were grinding together enough to hurt his jaw. But he knew it wasn’t anger at Dean. He wanted to say so.

“Yeah. You do that.”

He didn’t say anything. 

He walked away instead.


	2. Doing Alright

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean's day doesn't really get much better after his run-in with Cas.

Had someone told Dean Winchester that he would find Castiel Milton at a dive like Willy’s, he would have laughed and told them something derogatory about pigs flying. Yet, it had happened. Seeing the spray of black hair and the calm lassitude expelled by Cas was nothing short of a miracle. Dean thought, in a fit of hopefulness, that Cas had gotten out. That he had met a pretty girl to make like bunnies with and lived states away from the cage of their hometown. 

The shame Dean had felt that neither of them had the balls to get out was more for himself than for Cas. Maybe if Dean had pushed more to get Castiel out in the world, to drink and make merry, well, maybe Cas would have made it out if he saw the other options.

Dean had needed another whiskey when his not-drinking companion decided to turn the topic of conversation his way.

Even then, their unburdened camaraderie still seemed like something to take Dean away from the monotony. He thought when Cas offered to walk him home, that they could rekindle the friendship that had faded when the course of their majors had separated them even moreso than before. 

_Oh well,_ he decided. It was no use moping about what could have happened. They both had to face that they had already gone too far down the wrong paths. Part of Dean wondered if maybe Cas still had a chance. He had been at a bar, after all. Isn’t that a major monk-to-be no-no, even if he wasn’t drinking?

However, Dean’s stubborn refusal of Cas’s evasion didn’t go so well. Apparently Cas was stubborn too.

With a sigh, he let himself into his building and stopped a moment to collect his mail. His watch told him it was almost midnight, but his body was mantled with anxious energy from a twinge of guilt in his belly. Dean knew he shouldn’t have pushed Cas like that, especially since it had been over three years since they had actually been close, but Dean was nothing if not headstrong. At least the way Dean was going, he’d have his own business, continue the family name, and work on cars. He enjoyed being under the hood of a car more than anything, even if it wasn’t his goal in life. 

But he didn’t think Castiel deserved the drudgery of being a monk, and certainly not if it wasn’t what Cas wanted. 

Tucking the mail under his arm, Dean fumbled his keys around for the right key as he approached his own door in the dank hallway. Sammy had sent him a letter, the big nerd, and Dean couldn’t wait to read it. They talked on the phone more often than not, but both Sam and Dean were pretty crappy with words, and missed their brother-bred language of gestures and pranks. The letters helped, cheesy as they were. Hell, they kept Dean from going stir-crazy in the shitty little town he had come to both love and hate.

By the time Dean finished locking his door and threw his keys and the stack of mail on the table, he was half-opening Sam’s letter and half-walking to the fridge to get a beer. He didn’t feel like rummaging in the drawer for the bottle opener, so he grabbed one of the screw-top beers and settled down at the kitchen table to read. 

_Dear Dean,_

_Sorry I didn’t call you last week, but I had to study for midterms and the library conveniently has no signal. Feel free to call me after next Tuesday, but I’ll probably call you before then. I know I said I was coming home right after then, but I’m going to go to a friend’s house the first few days of break. Then you and Dad are the next stop. I’ll call you with the bus arrival time once I know it._

_How is he? He’s not still mad, is he? I’m sorry I couldn’t come to Thanksgiving, but it wasn’t really worth the long bus trips to see Dad passed out on the couch, and I knew winter break and midterms were going to come fast._

_I know you’ve heard me gush about Stanford and are probably sick of it by now, but my friend Brady introduced me to this girl Jess. She’s smart, smarter than me, and she snorts when she laughs and I’m not sure why it’s so adorable… but anyways. She’s the one whose family I’m staying with in the beginning of break. I wish she could come to Lawrence with me, but maybe she will next time. You’d really like her._

_So, what have you been doing? And don’t say “work” like you do when we’re on the phone. I know you’re restless enough to at least do something interesting with your life. I’m sure there’s_

Dean looked up from the letter, thinking of still replying that all he did was work, since there was little else he could say. Finishing his beer, he got up to put the bottle in his returnables. 

His landline rang out and Dean eased out of his seat with a groan to amble over to the phone. Who the hell calls at this hour? Looking at the area code, he smiled to himself. California. It was probably still a half-decent hour where Sammy was.

Kid could never get a handle of time zones.

“Speak of the devil,” Dean intoned jocularly. 

“How did you know?” Sam questioned with an incredulous tone that could only mean he was squishing up his nose in confusion. 

“Your area code, dumbass.” Jeez. Apparently Stanford made his little brother forget that he had brains.

“No, I was just reading about Lucifer. In Paradise Lost,” Sam paused to explain, “You know, it’s an epic…”

“Poem, yeah, by Milton,” Dean’s gut twisted when he thought of Cas walking away angry earlier that night, “I did go to college you know. Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven right?”

“I think you might have psychic powers. That’s exactly what I was reading,” Dean chuckled at Sam’s bewilderment. Good to know that Dean could still surprise him. But if anyone had psychic powers, it was the younger Winchester, not the elder.

“Come on, that’s like Book I. You’re not even at the good stuff yet.”

“We were just assigned the first few books as an independent reading in my Lit class. On top of studying for the midterm,” Sam sounded tired. It was only half past ten or so in California, but he had probably been studying all day. Or working. Guilt riled in the back of his throat. Sam shouldn’t have to work during midterms, but he was too stubborn to accept Dean’s checks. Dean paid for his brother’s dorm room, since it wasn’t included in the scholarship, but Sam refused to let Dean pay for Sam’s food or pocket money. 

“Have you been working lately?”

“Just a few hour shifts at the coffee shop. I take the low-traffic hours so I can study while there are no customers. Don’t worry, Dean, I’m not doing anything I didn’t do during midterms last year. I did okay then, I’ll do even better this year,” The kid was a goddamn workaholic. He sounded exhausted. 

“Yeah you will,” Dean tries to grumble under his breath, “Freaking genius child,” But he’s too damn proud of his little brother not to make it audible.

Sam’s responding laugh is more than enough to lighten his heart.

“Anyways, how’s the shop? How’re you?”

“The shop is normal. I’m normal. We should save our girly gossip time for the more important questions like ‘Who is this Jess girl and on a scale of one to ten how whipped is Sam by this girl?’” 

“Jessica Moore is a stunning psychology major, minoring in education, from Idaho who is suffering through the same Lit class as I am. And I am not whipped,” The last was added in a defiant tone that made the sick sweetness of his description even more gag-worthy. 

“I dunno man, you sound pretty whipped.”

Dean accompanied it with a _pshew_ whip sound and the appropriate gesture. He could envision the sour face Sam was making hundreds of miles away and grinned.

“So have you met anyone recently?” Sam inquired, in the petulant manner of couples in the honeymoon phase who wanted to set up anyone and everyone. 

“Nah. I’m still a roamer, but I did see Cas a couple hours ago,” Much as Dean didn’t want to admit it, he wanted to talk out this Cas thing. He didn’t understand why Cas had been so angry. 

“Cassie? Your ex?” Dean could imagine Sam raising his eyebrows. Sam’s pitch and his eyebrows both went up when he asked questions, and Dean never tired of teasing his little brother about that idiosyncrasy. 

“No, Cas, Castiel, whatever. From KU. You don’t remember him? He was by the house a few times for projects and stuff.” 

“Oh, the religious one?”

“That’s a very kind and collegiate way to describe a person, Sammy, really, just peachy.” When was his kid brother ever that into stereotyping? Dean was supposed to be the uncultured one.

“Jeez. Touchy. Didn’t know you were a-swinging that way, man.”

“No! Goddammit Sam. I’m just saying that my _friend_ is more than his religion,” Dean specified with a scowl.

“Wasn’t he supposed to join the monastery out by the edge of town? Out by Stull Cemetery, the old boneyard?” Sam was right, but Dean was still holding onto the pathetic hope that maybe he could save Cas from a life he didn’t want.

Dean sighed into the phone. 

“Yeah… he’s taking his vows and cutting his hair off and shit in a few weeks. Or that’s what he said. I’m not sure.” God, he didn’t even know. He knew he shouldn’t have made Cas angry. Hell, that’s how their tussles in college went down too. One of them would capitulate back then, and they would go back to normal. Now, Dean wasn’t so sure. 

“The word you’re looking for is a tonsure, and he wouldn’t get that when he’s taking his real vows. At least the abbey out by Stull does it at the novice level for those who want it, which means he’s doing a two-year noviciate.”

“And how do you know this?”

“Middle school project,” Sam stated nonchalantly. 

“Nerd,” Dean teased, “And what do you mean for those who want it?”

“Well, it’s not the middle ages, Dean. He doesn’t have to get a tonsure if he doesn’t want to.”

Dean grunted in the back of his throat, “Huh,” then why did Cas say he was going to do that? It wasn’t really Dean’s business and he knew it, but, what the hell, he was going to be nosy. The novice monk at least used to be his friend, and Dean wanted to help him if he could, even if all the help he could give was trying to understand.

But for whatever reason, Dean didn’t feel like Sam was the person to talk to about this. At least not right now. 

“Look, Dean, I have a morning class tomorrow and it’s probably almost two in the morning where you are.” Dean glanced at the clock guiltily.

“Yeah, you’re right. Go kick some college ass, use a condom, so on and so forth,” it always hurt to say goodbye to his little brother, but giving him shit made it feel a little less hollow. At least Sam would be back in town soon. 

“Uh, gross. Whatever man. Hey, I’ll talk to you later right?”

“Definitely,” Dean nodded into the phone. 

For a moment, the both stayed on the line, silent and rocked with the wish to keep talking. Dean sighed over the line as he heard the shuffle of Sammy clicking the button. The dial tone rang flat in his ears and he hung up as well, throwing the phone down on the table.

Scrubbing a hand over his face, Dean decided to finish reading the letter tomorrow after work. There was no point in tiring himself out further. His clothes felt heavy and unclean on his back. Stepping into dim light of the bathroom, Dean began unbuckling his pants. Three whiskeys and a beer hardly made him feel drunk, but he still stumbled to get to the toilet

Man. He didn’t even realize he had to pee that bad.

Shaking himself off, Dean decided to start the shower. He wasn’t quite up to going to sleep yet, and he had at least a minimum level of cleanliness to maintain. Something irked his nose; he took off his worn flannel shirt and sniffed at it, knowing the stale body odor smell probably came from his clothes. 

Wrinkling his nose, he threw the shirt and his pants in the overfilling hamper. Work wasn’t going to be a pretty sight tomorrow if he didn’t at least do some laundry soon.

_Add it to the list of shit to do, Winchester._

The shower was hot, but the water pressure was as undesirably lame as it usually was at his apartment. He scrubbed quickly and ran some two-in-one shampoo and conditioner through his hair so that it could pass for clean. No longer willing to stand in the quickly cooling spray, Dean stepped out onto the ratty old towel that passed for a bath mat. With a groan he remembered that his towels were mostly dirty. Still dripping, Dean walked into the hallway to see if there was anything passable in the tiny linen closet. There was a smallish white towel almost stained grey folded in the corner behind a set of sheets. It was probably pilfered from the cramped apartment above his father’s shop that they lived in after the house fire. 

“Oh great,” Dean tucked the scrap around his waist and perambulated to the bedroom, flopping down on the double bed, half dried off just from the chill air in his apartment. He fingered the edge of the thin duvet covering his bed. He’d probably have to get one of those fuzzy micro-fleece blanket things to put underneath. Their last winter had been exceptionally warm and the yellowing comforter had been adequate, but November was coming to a close and he was already freezing his ass off when he didn’t sleep in his clothes like normal.

It was looking like he’d have to get used to his shitty apartment for the duration, and maybe a few creature comforts wouldn’t hurt. Perhaps he’d even get some of those sleep pants. Dean planned the list in his head, knowing that a trip to the local Walmart wouldn’t break the bank.

Rubbing his eyes with the knuckle of his index finger, Dean crawled under the covers while suppressing a yawn. Almost half asleep, Dean remembered himself and flung the towel in the general direction of his closet as restless sleep overtook him. 

For Dean Winchester, waking up was never really pleasant. He would wake up before his alarm clock blared five-thirty and feel like he hadn’t slept a wink. Normally, the earlier he went to bed, the more tired he would be, so a good three and a half hours should have been enough. However, Dean woke up and couldn’t even sit up he felt so sore and tired and, not to mention, _cold_. His warm breath condensed in the gelid air of the room and inhaling it almost hurt his lungs it was so bitterly cold.

His body too recalcitrant to get up and walk his bare ass around the freezing room, Dean wrapped himself in the quilt and shuffled vaguely towards the closet. The only shirt there was a freaking white dress shirt. Going into work wearing that would not exactly be prudent, especially since there would be a greasy old truck he was repairing the transmission on waiting for him at the shop. The—mostly empty— plastic chest of drawers underneath that was little help. The only pair of pants he could find were either dress pants or a pair of jeans so tall the only explanation was that Sammy must have left them.

Dean pinched the bridge of his nose. This was not starting out to be a good day.

He went to the kitchen and made his coffee while still wearing the damn comforter. As the machine worked its magic he delved into the hamper with a bottle of Febreze so old that it must have been left by the last tenant. He sprayed a passable pair of jeans and a flannel shirt. Overtop, he threw on his leather jacket, thinking it would have to be enough to stave off the cold. 

After he downed his cup of coffee, burning the top of his mouth, of course, Dean grabbed his keys and barely remembered to lock his apartment and put on shoes before heading outside. 

To bitter wind blowing snow in his face.

On one hand, this meant the shop could be closed for the day due to dangerous weather, but on the other, it was lucrative to stay open when people needed a tow or hit a snow bank.

_Goddammit._

Dean’s cellphone rang in his pocket and he managed to get to his car fairly easily. The snow had only built up a few inches, but the sky seemed to say it would keep building. Once he was in the car, he flipped the cellphone open and started running the defroster. He alternately held the phone with one of his hands and held the other in front of the barely-warm car heater.

“Hello.”

“Hey, Dean, it’s me. I don’t think you really need to come into work today. The truck you were working on is gonna have to wait a day either way. And I can help a few idiots who don’t know how to drive in the snow without needing the extra set of hands.”

“Yeah, alright Dad. Just call me if you need any help, though,” Dean wouldn’t have minded working, but this meant he could make that Walmart run and get back before the snow got real bad. Then he could hang out in the building’s basement with some Busty Asian Beauties and catch up on all that laundry he needed to do. 

“Will do. Don’t freeze to death, son.”

“I’ll…” The dial tone hit his ears, “Try.” Reversing out of his parking space with a frustrated growl, Dean thought that his day really didn’t get much better, even with the day off.


	3. Not Quite There Yet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Castiel hasn't run in a few months. Or seen his family. He continues to avoid one of the above.

As Castiel stormed away from Dean, his anger only built. He had spent two calm months in relative peace and now he couldn’t even resolve a simple dispute without harsh words? Something had flicked a switch in Castiel, turning his entire resolve on its head, and he suspected that something was Dean. 

Sooner than he knew, he was walking fast, lungs aching with the chill of the night, and sooner than that he was running, farther and faster than he ever had. Belatedly, he realized he had passed the bar where his car was parked. Instead of stopping his frantic pace, he continued. This was good: he hadn’t gone on a proper run since he left for the monastery. Or at least, he could fool himself that he was just running. After turning a couple corners he realized he was in front of his parents’ house, and his keys ached heavily in his pocket at the idea of stopping his silly tantrum, simply going to bed in his childhood bedroom. The lights inside the house had been off for a while, it seemed, but the porch light still burned brightly; his parents had expected him to come home tonight. Or, more accurately, his mother had. His father and Michael were probably off on some business venture in Hong Kong or Europe, uncaring about the fate they had condemned Castiel to. 

With one hand, Castiel pushed his keys deeper in his pocket, and with the other, he smoothed his sweat-slicked hair out of his face. Every breath scraping his lungs with icy fingers, he continued running well into the night. 

He stopped when he had made a circle around the town and came back to the bar. It was well after closing time and the parking lot was empty, save for Castiel’s car. Still breathing heavily, he made his way to the driver’s side door, fumbling for his keys until he managed to unlock it. The muscles in his body protested as he sat and put the key in, but they relaxed as he continued to sit, too tired to even start the engine. The wintry air settled around his legs and held them still. 

_There’s no turning back now. I guess I have to go back to the house,_ Castiel thought as he leaned his aching head back against the head rest. He only closed his eyes for a second.

And woke up some hours later, sore and confused. The keys were still in the ignition, but he had never started it. Scowling he begged his freezing hands to work and immediately withdrew them from the climate controls after starting the heat on full to shove them under his sweater while the car defrosted itself and him. The windshield was fogged, but through it he could see puffs of niveus air dusting snow all over his car. Luckily he wasn’t entirely buried in snow yet, but he could have been. There was a blanket and a snow brush in the trunk and Castiel knew if he could get to them quickly, brush off the car, he would come back to find the interior of the car warmer and be able to get to the house before his mother awoke.

That was the plan, at least. 

When Castiel finally managed to open the door, it was only to find Dean standing there with a shit-eating grin on his face and two take-away coffees in his hands. 

“Sleep well?”

Grumbling, he took the coffee from Dean’s outstretched hand.

“Sorry, what was that?” Dean’s enthusiasm remained unbridled, even when Castiel sent him a glare that could melt bone. Shoving past him, Castiel sipped at the coffee. He opened the trunk and looked back at Dean, who was staring at him with raised eyebrows. Forgoing the blanket out of pride, he retrieved the snow brush and began cleaning off the car with swift strokes.

“You’re really not going to say anything.”

Another glare. 

Castiel’s muscles were still protesting, but he continued with meticulous care to brush the snow from his entire car. He was lucky it hadn’t iced over, but at least that would have provided him another task to distract him from talking to Dean. It wasn’t that he was angry at the mechanic or was even angry at himself anymore, but waking up in his car feeling like he ran a marathon without stretching was not boding well for his mood.

“Thank you for the coffee,” he tried to grind out behind his teeth when, to add to his utter humiliation, they started chattering. 

“You’re welcome. See, was that so hard?”

“A little,” Castiel managed to get out behind the chattering of his teeth while sucking in cold wind and cursing his benumbed fingers. Instead of being foolish, he popped the trunk again to deposit the snow brush and find the wool blanket he always kept there during the winter. 

“I can see that champ,” Dean gestured to the blanket around his shoulders, “Any chance you wanna get outta the little blizzard we seem to be having here and finish this coffee somewhere warmer?”

“Yes, but unfortunately I have to go to my parent’s house. I haven’t seen them,” Them being his mother, “Yet.”

Castiel felt guilty that he hadn’t just gone home earlier. His body certainly wasn’t doing him any favors after the beating he gave it, but Dean just smiled at Castiel’s dour mood. Dean probably didn’t understand Castiel’s reluctance, even though the answer to Dean’s question last night was fairly clear. He was at the bar because anywhere was better than with his family. 

“Rain check?” Dean ventured.

“Definitely.” 

“Well, if the storm lets up, you know where I’ll be,” Dean jabbed a finger at the snow-covered bar and began the walk towards his car, thinking it answer enough. 

“Same time?” Castiel projected his question to Dean’s back and was almost worried he wouldn’t be heard over the sounds of the wind picking up. 

Dean turned around with a cheeky grin on his face, hoisting his coffee cup, “Thereabouts.” He winked and took a sip; Castiel couldn’t help but scowl good-naturedly at him. It had been years and Dean Winchester hadn’t changed at all. Still a cocky bastard who drank too much and never gave himself enough credit, that one was.

Shrugging off his blanket, Castiel threw it in the passenger seat as he sat in the veritable sauna of his car. He took a minute to warm his hands and finish the coffee before driving the five minutes to his parent’s house. Since he wasn’t technically a monk living fulltime at the monastery yet, Castiel should have thought of it as his house. But four years of college away from his childhood home had made it foreign to him, and then his time traveling had made _him_ a stranger to the house. 

There was only a week left in November, and Castiel knew that the neighborhood would be lined with lights and wreaths the first day of December, like clockwork. However, the first snow in November usually caused a few unfashionable early decorators, and his mother, the neighborhood watchdog, would glare at their doors until December first, and then generously go over and offer her “home-baked” cookies. Everyone in this neighborhood knew the cookies were the kiss of death. If she offered you cookies, then you wouldn’t be getting a Christmas card or the package of her festive gingerbread cookies that came with it. Those were actually the good ones. The other ones were store-bought. 

Castiel did love his mother, for all her devious and vapid ways. She was mostly a trophy wife to his father, a realization he had come to at the ripe age of twelve, but that didn’t negate her love for all her children and theirs for her. Even Lucifer, to whom she secretly sent cookies and a card every year, despite his estrangement. He would always reply with the same card, saying, “It’s Nick now, mother. And my wife is doing well, thank you.” Lucifer did send her pictures of the baby, when he and his wife had their first. 

Unfortunately, Nick was still estranged from his siblings. He made attempts to communicate with him, but Castiel, Michael, and their father were all banned from his life. Castiel supposed it was right that Lucifer—Nick—didn’t want to speak to anyone who went along with their father’s plans. That was why Gabriel was exempt. Anna, as a woman, was apparently exempt from their father’s schemes (and thus Lucifer’s ire) so long as she earned good grades and garnered herself a fine education. They all kept Castiel in the loop, but somehow Castiel still didn’t know the baby’s name or gender. It was born while Castiel was walking the Camino de Santiago in Spain, a pilgrimage he undertook, and the lack of communication available there had kept him in the dark. 

It was a pity. He would have loved to see his niece or nephew.

As Castiel locked his car and approached the front door, he thought about how different things would be if Lucifer hadn’t rebelled. For one, neither Gabriel nor Anna would have been born. The Miltons, in a long line of antiquated tradition and patriarchy, always had three sons in accordance to some ancient primogeniture rule established long before his father’s father. The first would take over as lord of their estates, which now translated to Michael jet setting around the world with their father to examine the workings of their world-wide steel corporation. The middle would join the clergy, though the Miltons were strange in that they always sent their sons to the monastery, rather than the corrupt papal supremacy. Castiel always thought it was a vanity thing, something that made them look humble in the eyes of God. And the third son was the spare to the first son’s heir. He was supposed to learn exactly everything the first son did, just in case the son fell ill or died, as was common way back when. 

Lucifer, now Nick, was his parents’ second-born child. He was supposed to go to the monastery, not Castiel. Castiel was supposed to run some minor branch of the company, meet a girl, have babies and make a modest living for himself. But Lucifer ran away. Of course, he was only ten the first time; Castiel was barely out of infancy. That’s when his parents started trying for another baby. It took them two years and Lucifer continuing to make trouble, and they got a beautiful baby girl, Anna. Lucifer continued to evade their grasp, declaring that he loved God, but would not let his parents make a mockery of the free-thinking minds God put in their heads. Sooner than one would think, Gabriel came along. Castiel had only been five or six, but that’s when Lucifer ran for the last time.

How Lucifer wasn’t still some vagabond, he didn’t know. Castiel had a niggling suspicion that his mother had found Lucifer and used the generous stipend his father gave her to put Lucifer through a GED and low-level college and give him the skills necessary to get a job writing grants for a small county in Arizona. 

Anna grew up a respectable girl, prayed, and went to church every Sunday. She was a theatre major at Yale still, and would probably be home helping mother with the cookies once she finished her exams. Gabriel, well, the less said about Gabriel the better, but since the last phone call with Castiel, he had reportedly been working at a bakery somewhere in Canada. 

But neither Castiel nor his mother were supposed to know about Lucifer, Gabriel, or their lives. He was supposed to be living the medieval life at the monastery. His father still didn’t know they had added phone lines and a working computer since his brother’s time. 

Removing himself from the reverie, Castiel went to unlock the door, only to find his mother pulling it open. 

“You’ve been standing on the stoop for five minutes looking like an advertisement for one of those silly zombie movies. I was waiting to see how long you would take, but I don’t want to have the neighbors talk. Mrs. Hanson will be walking her dog at any minute. Come in, come in.”

The rush of warm air made Castiel wonder why he had been so scared to see his family again. It was just his mother. Castiel supposed that two months of wondering how family could force people to do things against their will had filtered over into his vision of his mother. She didn’t care what her children did, as long as it made them happy. But she couldn’t risk her husband being unhappy either. Castiel and Michael were just the sacrifices. Not that Michael was complaining: he loved working for the company. 

“Sorry, mother,” Castiel smiled at her. His mother closed the door behind Castiel and embraced him in a warm hug.

“Are you going to tell me why you didn’t come home last night, or am I going to have to guess?” She prodded. Castiel resisted the urge to roll his eyes. As fond as he was of his mother, she was the nosiest woman he had ever met.

“I ran into a friend from college. We stayed up late talking,” Or something, “I didn’t mean to worry you,” he finished. 

He took off his shoes in the foyer and let his mother lead him into the spacious drawing room, “Which friend?”

Castiel gulped, “Uh, do you remember Dean Winchester?” 

“Oh, of course. His mother Mary was a good Christian, even if she went to the Methodist church. She passed in the fire just a few streets over when you were barely four. Actually, I just got the Lexus in for an oil change with John, her widow, a week ago. I would normally go to the dealer, but, well, it’s an hour drive and I had the church charity banquet to get to.”

Just when Castiel thought she would stop talking and let him get a word in, “He said his son’s going to Stanford, Sam, was it? It’s good to see one of those boys reaching their full potential.” Castiel bit his tongue. It wasn’t as if he disagreed with his mother, but the unspoken slight to Dean made his teeth gnash. His mother, socialite though she may be, was never one for subtlety when she disapproved of someone in town. 

And John and Dean Winchester were far from churchgoing good samaritans. 

“Anyways, it’s good that you got to see a friend from town, especially after two months all cooped up.” Her apology for not helping him get out of the monastery went unsaid as she washed a pan. Castiel often wondered if she would do anything to help him if he rebelled like Lucifer did. She knew Castiel loved God as much as his estranged brother, so she figured it was just logic that he could be happy in the monastery.

And maybe he could.

“Yeah, it is, mom.”

She gave him a look of pity that made his insides grate. He didn’t need her pity. That’s why he had kept running.

“How about some breakfast?” His mother asks him, false happiness pervading her voice. His stomach growled.

“That would be wonderful, thank you.”

“I’m thinking waffles. The Forrester girl just registered with her high school sweetheart, you remember Jimmy? Well, I was thinking I would get them a waffle iron. But then I realized that that seems a little too close. Maybe I’ll get them a blender. Oh, did you hear? It caused quite a stir when…” Castiel let his mother’s gossip and chatter wash over him as he took in the house. When he was little, they had had a waffle maker that made these crispy thin waffles that tasted like buttery heaven and Bisquick all in one. Now Castiel saw his mother pull out a fancy Belgian waffle maker and felt the dull throb of a lump build in his throat. 

_Welcome home,_ he thought to himself bitterly.

“You’re awfully quiet. I was going to ask you what you wanted for dinner, since Michael and your Father won’t be home for a few days. I was thinking maybe we’d order out to that Italian place you love, but then I saw the weather forecast.”

“Anything is fine, mother,” Castiel replied with an air of absentmindedness, still pondering the waffle maker. He was sure the old one broke, but that didn’t make it feel any less wrong.

“I’m worried about you, Castiel.” She placed his hand over his and squeezed and Castiel thought he had never felt so profoundly out of place in his own house.

“Yeah, me too.”

In truth, the waffles were passable, though not as good as the ones from his childhood. Afterwards, he begged sanctuary and went to retrieve some of his things from his car. Once he had clothes, he was finally able to shower and ease the aches and pains pervading his muscles from his ill-advised run. When he got out of the shower, he found his mother had left a note that she was doing errands in the neighborhood, and he fixed himself a sandwich for lunch. 

The snowstorm let up in the afternoon and the snow plows did a better job than usual cleaning the streets. They had steak tips and mashed potatoes for dinner, which Castiel happily helped to make, despite his mother’s protests. The reunited mother and son spoke about trivial matters and Castiel was pleased to know that Anna would arrive home only the day after his brother and father, which meant that he would only have to experience one day of interrogation before it was his sister’s turn to show off the fulfillment she must have found at Yale. Castiel could only hope that he could act as happy, or at least content enough to deter suspicion.

Luckily for Castiel, his mother went to bed soon after dinner, saying she had to rise early for a spin class. Castiel only nodded and finished doing the dishes. Moving the sponge over the plates in small circles, Castiel was reminded of sanding the bookshelf he had just finished making for the monastery. Its insides were of a solid oak, stained a deep mahogany, as the monastery could afford, but Castiel had splurged with his own cash and veneered it with panels of curly maple in ochre tones. The brothers had fussed when he made it, but the piece was a beautiful addition to their library, almost exactly matching the antique shelving they already had. The brother who acted as librarian had smiled to see their newer volumes treated with the same respect as the old.

Castiel longed to work on a piece like that again, but the monastery was a simple place. It was unlikely he would.

It was around eight o’clock when a light snow began from the sky, but it didn’t stick to the recently salted roads, so Castiel wasn’t worried when he got in his car two hours later to go meet Dean.

The drive was quick, and Castiel was gratified to see Dean just walking in the door of the bar when he pulled in the parking lot. Dean turned to see the headlights and must have recognized his car, because as Castiel put his car in park and engaged the emergency brake, he heard a knock on his window. Bemused, Castiel rolled down his window. 

“You gonna sleep in there again? Looks kinda cramped,” Dean scrunched up his nose.

“No, I’m not, but thank you for your touching concern,” Castiel mocked as he exited and locked the car. Dean pouted. 

“Hey, I got you coffee.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Castiel grumbled.

Dean chortled as they entered the bar, “What’s with the bad mood, chuckles?” 

Feeling insulted, Castiel tried to object, “I’m not in a bad mood.”

Dean merely raised an eyebrow as they sat at a grimy table by the window. The caulk around the window was old and brown. It should have been redone years ago to save energy, but Castiel could hardly see the point. Selling alcohol was probably profitable enough that the owner could care less.

“I’ll go get us some drinks. Water?”

“A beer is fine. Monks drink a little. I may as well start,” Castiel felt a bitter taste seep into his mouth. He had always maintained that drinking alcohol was sinful; his father said so, so it must be true. But the monks were not so stringent. One of their most enjoyable pursuits was brewing, and it was traditional, since water wasn’t always safe to drink in the history of religion, alcohol was the only option. Drunkenness was never allowed, but one low-alcohol content beer was hardly as bad as Dean throwing vodka down his throat in college. He would switch to water after one, he told himself.

“I didn’t have a good day either, if it helps,” Dean assured him, leaning across the table as if proximity would make his statement more truthful, before leaving Castiel’s space to go order. Castiel shook himself out of the spell Dean’s closeness had cast. It hadn’t been that bad of a day, but, somehow, it wasn’t a good one either, and Castiel couldn’t put his finger on why.

Dean settled back into his seat, sliding a beer towards Castiel and nursing one of his own, “So, you wanna tell me about your day, Huggy Bear?” 

“Nothing much to tell,” Castiel evaded, this time knowing it was true.

“Alright, you wanna tell me why you slept in your car, then?” Dean suggested with a gulp of his beer. Castiel paused, hands wrapped around his beer and brain running like haywire. He couldn’t very well tell his friend that he was having some sort of existential crisis and somehow didn’t see any other option than running. 

“I took a walk around town to cool off,” Castiel looked in Dean’s eyes and hoped the apology for his temper was evident, “And I ended up falling asleep in the car when I got back.”

“Well, good thing you left the parking brake on, then.” 

“Yes, I suppose so,” he said absent-mindedly, fiddling with the bottle. Beer: There was a beer in his hands. It was cool, but not as cold as the snow that began to rapidly fall outside. Castiel wasn’t worried about the snow. He was sure he would make it home in one piece. 

“I’m sorry too, Cas.” The words wake Castiel up out of his small panic. It seemed that apparently his unspoken apology had worked. 

Maybe Dean had changed. 

“I know, though not as sorry as I am for not resolving it immediately. It wasn’t prudent of either of us to argue when we’re in the same boat,” Castiel admonished.

Dean chuckled, “Yeah, the freaking Titanic of all boats.” 

“Does that imply that we’re sinking?”

Shrugging, “Just that we went too far. Hit the iceberg,” he commented. Castiel agreed with the imagery. 

“Which begs the question,” Dean finished before Castiel could speak, “Are you gonna find your piece of rubble and float free, Winslet?” 

“If anyone’s Kate Winslet, it’s you,” Castiel mocked. He was still staring at his beer, working up the courage to take a sip. It wouldn’t be bad; the Abbot was drinking a homemade brew just last week. Castiel still had to work against every ounce of his body telling him it was wrong, though.

“Touché, Cas,” Dean paused, “You could take a picture of the damn thing. It’ll last longer.”

Bristling, Castiel took a gulp of the beer. It certainly wasn’t pleasant, but it was better than being mocked. 

“You were saying?”


	4. Maybe in Denial

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bad weather brings the worst and best out of people.

A chuckle jostled Dean’s chest as Cas threw back a gulp of beer as if it were a shot of tequila, “I was saying that, for one, you’re totally Winslet, and two: you’re an idiot.” 

Toying with the label of his beer, Castiel looked up from what seemed to Dean to be a very deep concentration on the sleeve of paper. Dean noted the way Cas’ fingers tightly gripped the bottle, even though it began sweating condensation in the warmth of the bar. His companion cleared his throat, and Dean tried not to smile at the way he sat up straighter and composed himself. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Dean gave him a look of disbelief, “Really? ‘Cause it seems to me like you’re denying that you want to get off this ship before it sinks.” 

“Look, Dean, could we dispense with the metaphor?” Cas’ eyes practically begged him, “I really don’t want to talk about this.” They were caught in a staring contest now, Dean’s emotions wavering between giving into the dude and his big blue eyes, or continuing on his stubbornly set course. He broke the eye contact. 

“Alright. So tell me you’re not floating down a river in Africa right now, ‘cause you’re either floating down it or drowning yourself in it until you believe, and I’m not sure which is worse.”

“Drowning is generally worse than floating, in all senses. And I’m putting a conversational ban on metaphors,” Castiel dipped his hand into the bowl of peanuts to fetch a fistful, beginning to eat them with deliberate focus. 

“So is it _like_ you’re drowning or _like_ you’re swimming?”

“Similes too.” 

Dean caved, “Alright, but, in all seriousness. I just… even if you’re not going to be convinced to leave a life you don’t want…” He paused to look up, meeting Castiel’s eyes, “You should at least be able to bitch at me about your shitty deck in life rather than forcing yourself into a state of denial.”

“Shouldn’t the same apply to you?” Castiel retorted, saying it as if it were agiven. Dean scoffed at his strange evasion tactic.

“What? Why would it?”

Castiel ground his teeth visibly, “Because, as I think you would put it, your head is so far up your ass you could probably see daylight.” 

Dean stared at him in gaping astonishment, mind so blank he couldn’t even close his mouth. Maybe Dean wasn’t the best example of perfect happiness, but he had family and a job and what did Cas know? He avoided his family at every second. Dean’s mind continued to fry at the strange possibilities Castiel was presenting. When his brain started working again after its little short circuit, well, it wasn’t pretty.

“You said _ass_ ,” Dean beamed, flashing a grin across the table. His default mode was charming, and it barred all of his other nasty character traits from starting up. 

“Yes, and I’m drinking a beer. This is a day full of firsts, Mr. Obvious,” Castiel spat with a bitter edge to his tone that made Dean a little scared of what his prodding had done to his friend.

“It’s Captain Obvious,” he managed to reply.

“Whatever.”

They stared at each other over the bowl of peanuts, Dean unwilling to break eye contact and the chance to see whatever was going through Cas’ mind. Both their beers were untouched for a good minute. Dean decided to test him, and started drinking his beer without taking his eyes from Castiel’s. The only thing Cas did in response was eat more peanuts. Clearly he liked those more than the beer. 

Gulping, Dean remembered too late that Castiel was a monk, or about to be one. He could probably go days in silence. Dean, on the other hand, found the lack of talking irritating, despite the background noise of the bar, the crunching of peanuts in Cas’ mouth, and the sound of Dean scraping his beer across the table from one hand to the other. 

“Freaking goddammit Cas, fine,” Dean exclaimed while slamming his fist on the table.

“Go on,” Castiel motioned.

Dean couldn’t help but grind his teeth together, tone vicious as he enunciated every word, “We are both drowning ourselves in this little river in Africa, but, Cas, you son of a bitch, you still have a chance. Maybe I’m not entirely happy, but at least I don’t have to cut my freaking hair off and bathe in the blood and body of Christ or whatever the hell you do. Being a mechanic is all I’m really good for anyways. But you have potential, Cas, you’re not like me.” He became more plaintive as he went on, but he couldn’t help that he was begging his friend to do the smart thing and get out.

But Castiel’s hand lunged across the table and slammed down on Dean’s shoulder like the wrath of God and Dean fell silent, Castiel’s eyes boring into his.

“Now, that, Dean Winchester, is where you’re wrong. Neither of us is entirely happy, let’s get that out of the way. But both of us make honest livings that we do enjoy parts of and we’re not starving to death, so don’t be dramatic. But you, you have a college degree in engineering. You could do almost anything in that field and you have every opportunity to do so, whether you like it or not. And you are smart, Dean, smarter than anyone I’ve ever known so don’t give me that self-deprecating bullshit either,” Did Cas just say bullshit? “And, you know what I have? I have a degree in _Theology_ , do you know where that gets me? At a church, at a monastery, in a religious archive. No matter what, it doesn’t matter. A church isn’t a woodshop and we both know, as religious as I may be, it will never be enough. Just as being a mere mechanic will never be enough to you. But you got the right degree. You can get out. Or at least I thought you could.” The pressure on his shoulder released. The man’s grip had been tighter than a vice.

Dean cleared his throat of the lump that had been forming in it, “Yeah, well, Cas, the fact is that we’re just doing this ‘cause we’re good sons and we both know we’re never gonna pick anything else. I thought you might have had the chance, but clearly it’s wasted on you.” 

“Funny, I thought the same thing about you.”

Castiel stood, pulling on his jacket. He grabbed his wallet and shoved a wrinkled ten on the table. Without a word, he walked from the bar. Dean stared wistfully out the window, figuring that would be a better sight for Cas to see if he turned around than Dean pining after him with his mouth agape. 

He probably didn’t turn around, though.

 _Man, there’s like a foot of snow here. Holy shit,_ Dean thought. Part of him knew that he shouldn’t let Castiel drive home in this. Hell, Dean shouldn’t even walk home in the storm, given the way the wind was blowing. Too late, Dean realized that most patrons had been smart enough to go home a little while ago. Only a few heavy drinkers that lived nearby remained, putting liquor in their bellies to stave off the cold. 

_That’s it, I’m going after him._ Standing and shuffling around in his pockets, Dean pulled out his wallet and threw down a random bill before hurrying out the door. Not only was there a good eight inches of snow on the road, but it was icy. Dean could see Castiel’s shitty Toyota in the parking lot, and the lone figure rapidly trying to clear it of snow with a snow brush.

Cas would need a real shovel to get that car clean. And even if he managed that, he probably wouldn’t be able to get out. The car only had front wheel drive, and he had parked those useful front wheels to the curb. 

“You know you’re never gonna get out of that spot, right?” Dean asked, knowing that the rhetorical question didn’t erase the blood boiling fight they had just experienced.

Grumbling, Castiel continued his futile attempt to clear off the car, “Well, then what do you suggest I do?” 

“My place is close enough to walk to,” Dean shrugged, selfishly hoping Castiel would take it for the olive branch it was. They both knew they were being idiots and lashing out because of equal amounts of unhappiness. But there were other things they could talk about. Dean, stubborn as he was, even knew that. 

Castiel’s eyes may as well have bored holes through Dean, he stared so long. 

“Fine. Lead the way,” Cas gestured to a dumbfounded Dean. 

“Good. I didn’t want to have to repair your car if you went off the road,” Dean said, even though it was an abysmal attempt at lightening the mood. Castiel raised his eyebrows with almost comedic height.

“I thought you said I wasn’t going to get out of that spot.”

Dean sighed, “Well, Willy, if that even is his name, probably has a shovel. But then you’d be out on these unpaved icy streets and pumping your brakes and that’s just not safe.” Dean had worked on so many cars that slipped on black ice or slush. The damage was not pretty and not cheap to fix. Not to mention the potential damage to the human driver. 

“You do realize that I have ABS brakes, right? Not everyone has a car from the 70s,” Pointed out Castiel, while Dean cringed. 

“60s man, my baby is a 1967 Chevy Impala, and I’ll have you know that Anti-lock Brake Systems started becoming standard in the early 70s.” Dean bit back the trivia on the first true ABS brakes on planes in the late 1920s, knowing it was fairly irrelevant and couldn’t have been applied to cars. But it was still cool. Castiel gave a little smile, more than Dean could have expected of him right after their blowout.

They were about half a block from his building when Dean really started feeling the cold. Ice pelted him, mixing in with the snow and melting in his clothes. Even his boots didn’t keep out the freezing wetness as it seeped into his socks and squished between his toes. Dean didn’t want to think how cold Cas was, in his trench coat and loafers. 

_Good thing I got blankets,_ Dean thought to himself. 

“It’s not much farther, right?” Asked Cas with a shiver that he definitely didn’t fake. 

“Yeah, buddy, we’re almost there,” Dean reassured him, even as sleet bit into the back of his neck, working its way under his clothes, only to melt like frozen fire against his skin. His hands, shoved into his coat pockets as they were, still tingled with the raw cold of everything. At the same time, his muscles quaked with the effort of putting one foot in front of the other in the snow lying heavily on the sidewalk.

He had a feeling this was going to be a bad winter if the first storm was this wild.

When Dean sighted the dank edifice of his apartment building through the thick snow buffeting the sky, his heart sang like it never had before for the place. Any sort of warmth would do. Dean clutched the keys in his pocket, picking out the right key by feel as they approached the door. On the concrete stoop, in the lamp light, Dean could see Castiel shuddering, teeth chattering dully together as Dean opened the door. He shuttled in Castiel and closed the glass door on the freezing wind, feeling heat singe his too-cold extremities with pins and needles. The entryway was hardly warm, so Dean led Castiel down the hallway to his apartment. 

Coughing, Dean grunted, “Mi casa es su casa,” as he let Cas in and flicked on the light-switch, knowing the tiny apartment probably wasn’t terribly impressive. At the moment, Cas could probably care less. 

Dean felt a surge of pity in his heart when he saw Castiel’s trousers, sodden with snow at the ankles and damp from sleet everywhere else. His hair looked windblown and his ears were red with cold. 

“Come on, let’s get you into some warm clothes.” Dean removed his boots and motioned to Castiel to do the same with his—probably ruined—leather loafers. That didn’t help the cold, though, so Dean removed his soaked socks too, and trampled over to the thermostat to turn it up. Not sure if Cas would follow him or not, Dean made his way to his bedroom to grab clothes for the both of them. 

Dean’s trip to Walmart today had left him in luck; he had gotten two pairs of sweatpants for six bucks, and handed one of them to the highly confused Cas, who had followed him. In addition, Dean gave Cas a pair of socks and a tee-shirt, glad that he had done his laundry. 

“Bathroom’s over there, you can hang up your clothes in the shower to dry,” he added, shoving a few hangers into his companion’s open hand. Already shivering, Dean began to strip off his own jacket and shirt, raising an eyebrow at the confused and trembling Cas standing in his room.

“Right, I’ll just go…” Cas coughed, “Yeah.”

After Cas left, Dean attired himself similarly and grabbed the new fleece blanket spread over his bed. Passing the bathroom door, Dean saw that it was still closed, and threw the blanket over the couch as he looked around the cramped kitchen for some decaf.

His toes were still a little numb, but as he began walking around the kitchen opening his sparse cabinets, they began prickling with sensation. Dean knew he had some decaf somewhere. He slammed close the silverware drawer with frustration and turned around.

Castiel was standing there, head tilted and eyes squished into a mockery of confusion.

“What exactly are you looking for?” He asked.

“I was looking for, you know what, whatever. Forget it. I was just going to make us some decaf to warm up. You should go sit on the couch, snuggle or whatever. You look like hell froze over.”

“That’s very kind of you Dean, but I’m not an invalid or a guest you even wanted in the first place. I’ll help.”

Dean groaned and put his arm on Castiel’s forehead in exasperation, “Feels like you have a fever to me. Get on the couch, my esteemed and wanted guest,” Dean lightly shoved him out of the kitchen, much to Cas’ chagrin. 

“And use the goddamn blanket,” Dean called at him, knowing the dude would just sit there, back straight and knees at a ninety degree angle if he wasn’t told otherwise. 

“I’m not a child,” He heard Castiel grumble, just as Dean’s eyes alighted on the packets of hot chocolate tucked in his cupboard. 

“Cas, you want some hot cocoa?” Dean couldn’t keep the grin off his face as he started boiling the water. 

“Do not baby me, Dean Winchester.” Castiel’s tone made Dean wish the handprint mug Sammy had made him in his art class wasn’t still at Dad’s house. The glare probably wouldn’t leave Cas’ face for days after if he got his hot chocolate in that.

“Wouldn’t dream of it, pumpkin,” He chirped ironically, “You want little marshmallows too?” He poured the packets into mugs, listening to the shifting of the blanket in the living room.

“Yes, please.” 

_Who knew Cas had a soft and sensitive side?_

The whistle on his kettle was broken, but steam poured out of the spout and he figured it was good enough. Turning off the stove, he filled each of the cups with water and stirred. To both, he added the little marshmallows that he may or may not have bought on a whim as the days got colder and darker.

Beverages complete, Dean made his way over to the couch to find Cas curled up in the blanket, fluffy black hair stiffened in random peaks as he looked over the plain room with its white walls, olive green couch, and box television. 

“Order’s up, princess,” Dean said, smirking at Castiel as he woke the cocooned man from whatever trance he had been in.

“Thank you, Dean.”

“Scoot on over and we’ll call it even,” quipped Dean as he planted himself by Cas’ blanket wrapped feet. Handing Castiel his hot chocolate, Dean brought his legs up under the blanket as well, sipping at his own drink. Their sock-clad feet touched, but Dean was still too cold to care. 

They sat in companionable silence for a bit, mainly because the apartment had only heated up a few degrees and drinking the hot chocolate was easier than acknowledging their fight or the fact that they seemed to be easily forgetting that it happened 

After a few minutes, as Dean was sipping on the last dregs of his—admittedly enjoyable—hot chocolate, Cas let out a yawn. Dean forgot that Castiel probably hadn’t had much sleep lately.

“We should probably turn in. I’ll get you a pillow and some sheets for the couch.” Patting Cas on the knee, he disentangled himself from the blanket. Castiel did the same, and gestured for Dean to give him his mug. Reluctantly, Dean handed it over, letting Castiel go into the kitchen while he retrieved the promised bedclothes. He felt kind of bad about exiling Cas to the couch when he had just slept in his freezing car the day before, but he simultaneously knew that it would have caused more conflict than was really necessary for one in the morning.

Dean still maintained that Cas was as stubborn as a mule.

His point was only proven when Dean was just putting the pillow in its case. Castiel emerged from the kitchen, presumably having cleaned the mugs already, put his hand over Dean’s, saying “I’ll finish.”

Withdrawing, “Alright with me,” Dean said, headed for his room as Castiel arranged the bed clothes to his liking. 

“Sleep tight,” He mumbled from the frame of his bedroom door. 

Cas probably didn’t hear him. 

Dean turned off his lights and tumbled into the bed for what passed as sleep in his world. 

Usually, Dean didn’t remember his dreams, and the same was true when he awoke and his heart was pounding. He had the startled sense that he was missing something very important. Clutching at his chest, he felt that the necklace his brother had given him was still there. There wasn’t anything else that materially mattered to him. Maybe he would call Sam later; that would help.

The smell of bacon grease and butter floated through the air and Dean’s mind was wrenched back to mornings when his mother was still alive and would fill his hungry belly with pancakes, bacon, and morning hugs. Gritting his teeth, Dean rose, determined to find the cause of the smell.

When he rounded the corner to enter the cramped kitchen, he remembered that he had pretty much made Cas stay over the previous night. So he shouldn’t have been surprised to see him making breakfast. Yet it was still a strange sight to see him leaning over Dean’s stovetop, staring at a still-cooking pancake as if it had done something wrong. 

“What’d that pancake ever do to you?”

Castiel held his hand in a stopping motion, “Shh, Dean. I’m looking for the bubbles.” 

“Why are you even making food? Did you think I wouldn’t feed you?” Dean grunted, sitting at the table where a steaming cup of black coffee was already waiting for him. He sipped at it. It didn’t taste like old dregs. Clearly Cas had changed the disposable coffee filter he had been using for the past month. 

“Dean, we had an argument and you still sheltered me. I hardly think breakfast is an adequate show of my gratitude, but it’s something I knew I could do,” He flipped the pancake, nodding in approval at the golden color. 

“You don’t owe me anything, Cas, I didn’t want you to think that.”

“I didn’t. Thanking someone doesn’t mean you owe them,” Cas slid the pancake on a plate and placed it in front of Dean, “Eat up.”

Castiel remained at the stove, cooking a pancake for himself. The maple syrup was already on the table, and Dean’s dented old silverware lain out. Dean smirked to himself. His friend didn’t half-ass anything, apparently. All it was missing was a girly bouquet of fresh flowers.

“Where did you learn to cook pancakes anyways? I thought your family was rich and pretentious,” Dean asked around a mouthful of pancake. Castiel paused, arms rigid, before he carefully flipped his own pancake, maintaining a gaze on it.

“My mother taught me. She doesn’t like having people do things for her, and she didn’t think we should be raised with silver spoons in our mouths. My older brother disdains that, as does my father, but she has control of our house in Lawrence. It’s her one point of power, I would suppose. Though, admittedly, I didn’t get good at pancakes until I had to help cook at the monastery. We all take turns.”

Dean couldn’t help but notice how faraway Cas sounded, as if he were describing someone else’s life.

“How about you?” Castiel asked with a less absent tone.

“Oh, around. I helped take care of Sammy a lot growing up,” _At least when Dad was drinking, which was too often_ , “I had to learn on the go.”

Castiel sat down with his own pancake. Chocolate chip, it looked like to Dean. And no maple syrup either. _Interesting._

“I’m sure your brother appreciates all you’ve done,” Cas commented without prompting. Dean felt a surge of pride in his heart that his friend thought well of his brother. They had probably only met in passing, but it was still good to know the impression his little brother gave. 

Dean smiled to himself, “Yeah, we’re close.”

“You’re lucky. I wish I were closer with my siblings,” He paused, between a bite of chocolate chip pancake to make eye contact with Dean. Sometimes Dean forgot how electric looking into Castiel’s eyes could be.

“Don’t you have an army of them, though?”

“Only four, but it can seem like a lot,” Cas chuckled. When their eyes met, Dean couldn’t tell what was behind Castiel’s regard. 

Unsure what to say, Dean remained silent as they finished their breakfast.

“Thanks, man,” Dean broke the silence as he cleared the plates.

Castiel shrugged, “It was no big deal. I should probably get home, though. I checked earlier and the streets are cleared.”

“Oh, yeah, okay,” Dean coughed, “Do you want a ride to your car? Maybe a shovel?” He put the plates in the sink, telling himself he would take care of them later. 

“That would be great,” Castiel smiled, moving in front of Dean to scrub the plates clean, despite Dean’s protest. Exasperated, Dean stood behind Cas as he finished.

“You done going all good housewife on my apartment?”

Letting a puff of air out of his nose that passed for a laugh, Cas put the last dish in the drying rack. 

“Yes,” Cas gave a small smirk.

“Smug bastard. Let’s get you home,” Dean clapped him on the back as they exited his apartment. Maybe this whole friendship thing could work out.


	5. A Little Better (Maybe)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Michael returns, stirring up tensions new and old in Lawrence.

Dean was called into work before they could finish clearing his car. Castiel was about to hand him the shovel, even if his wheels were still stuck in snow, but Dean held up a hand to stop him.

“Keep it for now. Just means you have to deal with me again and return it later, preferably while buying me a beer,” Castiel retracted the shovel, instead offering his hand.

As Dean grasped it for a firm handshake, Castiel confirmed, “You’ve got yourself a deal, Winchester.”

His friend chuckled and released the handshake, turning back to his car with a wave over his shoulder. As the classic car roared out of the parking lot, Castiel laughed to himself. Dean and Castiel were never going to be best friends, but they could probably be good friends without fighting (at least not often). 

Part of Castiel still stung from the words said during their arguments, and, in all likelihood, Dean did too. But arguing over hypotheticals was the least of Castiel’s problems. Michael and his father were to return in a few days, and, as November turned into December he would help his mother put up their tasteful decorations and sign the Christmas cards before they went out, and pray that Anna came home quickly. 

After spinning his wheels for another half hour, Willy, the owner of the bar came by, pulled out a jug of cat litter with a grunt and sprinkled it behind his wheels. Castiel thanked him while clambering into the driver’s seat and received a jerk of the head in response.

Unluckily, he pulled into the driveway just as his mother was about to close the garage door, wearing expensive sweatpants and with her Coach gym bag in hand, “Castiel? What were you doing out and about last night? Your bed was still made when I left this morning. And aren’t those the clothes you wore yesterday? They look incredibly rumpled.”

Castiel hesitated on an open vowel, unable to come up with a convincing lie.

“You know what?” She held up a hand, “I don’t want to know. Come inside and I’ll make us some eggs.”

He breathed out a sigh of relief and followed her into the garage.

Michael arrived a week later, stepping out of a limo and into their mother’s open arms. He planted a cursory kiss on her head and backed out of the embrace just as easily. The valet pulled his suitcase past them and into the entry hall. 

“First door on the left upstairs,” Michael ordered, handing the man a crisp, new bill. 

Castiel never quite understood the way his brother and father treated people, like they were automatons to be directed to do the least little thing, so long as they were properly incentivized. Michael certainly worked out to maintain his mind and physique, lifting his Armani suitcase up the polished stairs would be nothing to him. But it wouldn’t show the _right_ kind of power, the kind of power his father raised him into.

Michael turned to him and Castiel felt his heart beat a little faster at how swift the motion was, how deadly and calculated his gray eyes were. Knowing an interrogation was about to commence, and he winced in anticipation.

Fortunately, his mother stepped in with her own inquiry, “Michael, where is your father?”

“He had to stay behind to take care of some business in the Beijing branch. He sends his love.” She purses her lips and says nothing more except a curt nod towards the kitchen, indicating that she was going in that direction.

“Castiel,” Michael said with a tone of false warmth, “How fares my only remaining brother?

His heart skips a beat and his throat goes dry at the casual way that Michael dismisses Gabriel and Lucifer from his life—just as quickly as his father did when they no longer cooperated with his wishes. Just like Michael would ruin the valet’s career if everything in the suitcase wasn’t properly put away and crisply hung up like it had never been packed at all.

He couldn’t help but grit his teeth.

“As well as ever, Michael.” 

“Yes, well I’m glad to see you settling into your position; I was worried, what with all that travelling you were doing. I’m glad you didn’t become a restless soul like some other people I could name.” Michael referred to the fact that Castiel had lived abroad for a year after finishing college, hiking and living from hostel to hostel instead of the five-star hotels Michael and his father favored.

“I’m faithful to my family and God,” He answers dutifully, hoping it would save him from further interrogation.

Michael nods and smirks, “Good answer.” Castiel breathes a sigh of relief when his older brother walks away to spend time with their mother, the one person he actually seemed to act human towards.

Because Castiel knew father didn’t actually send his love, but that Michael said that to soften the blow for mother. She was beautiful and warm and giving, yet not enough for his father, who instead spent his time with a myriad number of much younger women who were beautiful in the ways his mother was beautiful when she first married into the Milton family.

Castiel knew if his father wasn’t so bound to tradition, he would probably have divorced their mother and taken a young bride with whom to have a third Milton son, well, one that counted anyways.

After dinner, while mother cleaned the kitchen, Michael pulled him aside into the living room. He hands him a sheaf of papers, and Castiel looks at Michael quizzically, nothing the Delta airlines symbol on the shiny blue and red pamphlet.

“I didn’t want to tell you this in front of mother or Anna, you know it would only upset them.”

“Tell them what?” He begins to open the plane ticket to find one with his name on it, going to Illinois. There was no return date on it.

“After Christmas, you’ll be going to visit Uncle Zachariah at his abbey. He’s going to show you what it’s like to play a part in leading the monastery.”

Castiel stares blankly at the paper in his hand, unable to return his face to Michael’s lest the tears threatening to build in his eyes unleash themselves. He chokes out, “Why?”

“Oh Castiel, you’re a Milton. You didn’t think you were going to be allowed to sit idly by in that woodshop and not be a leader, did you? It’s the second son’s duty to make his family proud through accomplishments as well, even if they’re just monastic.”

It takes all his strength not to tremble as he clenches his fist around the ticket, “I’m not the second son,” is all he manages to say through his anger. 

“Sure you aren’t,” Michael condescends with a sneer, “But this is about duty, not about who was born before whom. So, as we say in the business world, put on your big girl panties and deal with it.”

Without another word, the eldest brother turned on his heel and strode upstairs, head held high and shiny shoes making squeaking on the stair treads. As soon as he was out of sight, Castiel leaned against the wall, body shaking as he slumped to the ground.

Michael had called it a visit. He searched frantically through the ticket booklet for a return ticket. There was none. 

Castiel had thought that by doing what his family wanted he had escaped their manipulations. It seems he hadn’t. 

Anna’s arrival is delayed by snow, but she shows up nary a day later like a ray of sunshine in the cold, just as their mother had finished decorating the house. Michael had been at work most of the time, so luckily Castiel avoided another confrontation with him.

She rushed up to hug mother, then him, in that order, whispering in his ear, “I missed you big brother.”  
Castiel hummed quietly in reply, tucking his head into the crook of her neck and hoping she would understand. She squeezed him a little tighter and he knew she did.

Anna took up most of his time for the next three weeks. He hit the bar every Friday to meet Dean while Anna went to hang out with her friends from high school, and his mother didn’t say a word. Michael mostly stayed at his apartment in the city, coming home for the weekends where he would spend all day in conference calls anyways.

Castiel didn’t particularly envy him his job, but the mechanical, precise way in which Michael operated made him think that his older brother was perfectly suited to it. Or perfectly molded to be perfectly suited to it. 

He did envy Anna her college experience. While Castiel had enjoyed being a Theology major, especially since he could take whatever electives he wanted, the fact was that he hadn’t had a choice. She was born for the stage, and of course nailed her audition for many schools, but chose Yale because she wanted to be able to take a more serious minor in literature instead of being shoehorned into the drama department of whatever other school. 

Compared to the estrangement Lucifer and Gabriel faced, Castiel much preferred what Anna was doing—and thought he had been doing just that. Staying in the background, being quiet and being obedient while still pursuing what he wanted in his spare time.

But that wasn’t enough for his father.

Christmas dinner came and went and the man in question didn’t show up. His mother cooked something fantastic as usual, and Castiel cherished Anna’s smiles, and even the small ones pulled by mother from Michael. But the table felt empty and there were Tupperware bins filled with turkey, ham, and every variety of potato and rolls for days afterward. 

As Castiel went to put the rolls away after dinner, his mother leaned over to him, “You want to know a secret? I got the recipe for these rolls from Mary Winchester. They’re Methodist church rolls.” His mother giggled and placed a finger over her lips as if this was some great secret.

She clearly had enough wine, and Castiel was glad when she retired early.

As he expected, Willy’s was open and nearly deserted except for two tall, broad-shouldered men sitting at the bar, the taller one with longer hair flipping right above his ears, and the shorter unmistakably wearing Dean’s leather coat.

He shakes off the cold and goes to sit beside them, gesturing for Willy to give him a soda and grabbing something out of the bag he carried, wrapped tidily in brown packing paper.

Placing the package before Dean, he grunted a “Merry Christmas,” and received an almost offended look in response.

“You got me a present?”

“Just open it, Winchester.”

Sam reaches across the bar behind Dean, “I’m Sam, heard a lot about you,” and offers his hand to shake. 

Castiel takes it and replies, “Castiel, and I could certainly say the same about you.”

Dean’s younger brother looks down shyly, almost blushing—clearly he knew how much pride Dean showed in him. 

“You got me a spatula and coffee filters?”

“I was getting my mother a waffle iron at the kitchen store and remembered how old your spatula was. And your penchant to not replace the coffee filter.”

Dean coughs into his hand, averting his face before clapping him on the back with the other hand, “Thanks, man.”

“Anytime.”

“Well then I guess this round’s on me? Merry Christmas, buddy.” They all raise their glasses and clink them together, small smiles lighting up their faces like the string of ancient, blinking Christmas lights behind the bar. 

“Did you guys just get here?” Castiel asked, and immediately regretted asking.

Dean and Sam looked at each other, mutually wincing, “Dad doesn’t do well around the holidays,” Sam explains, eyes darting back to Dean, silently asking how much was okay to say in front of him.

Castiel grabs the paper grocery bag next to him and offers it, “Well, I’m leaving soon and I know Anna and my mother would never eat half the stuff in here unless it was a holiday, so I brought some leftovers.”

“We had Chinese,” Sam quickly counters, as if a friend giving friends leftovers were some kind of charity. 

“Well, these keep well,” He hesitates before adding, “My mother told me that the rolls were from your mother’s recipe. I guess it’s just one of those mom things, trading recipes and the like. I think all the churches in the area organized a huge bake sale when I was pretty young, all I remember was Luc—my older brother describing how much good food he ate. But yeah… I guess we’ve been eating those at Christmas every year and I hadn’t even noticed.”

Sam expression looks almost guilty, and Dean’s eyes sparkle with something that Castiel wouldn’t call tears, and Dean’s voice is rough as he claps him on the back, grabbing his shoulder with one strong hand, “Thanks, Cas.”

The younger brother looks in the bag, “This is like a four person meal, and you’re telling me there are more leftovers?”

“Not many more. My plane flies out tomorrow to visit my Uncle’s monastery, and since no one else in the house is going to eat it… My mother still cooks like all of us are there, not normally, just on the holidays.”

Dean startles, “Your plane is tomorrow? Why’d you schedule it so soon after Christmas?”

“You say that like I scheduled it myself.” With a look of comprehension, Dean nods and turns away.

Sam seems to know well enough to drop it.

“So when’s your return plane?” Dean says to make conversation.

Castiel hesitates again, knowing an argument would likely occur if he didn’t phrase his words carefully. “I’m going to book one once I get there, I’m not sure what kind of help Zachariah needs or if it’s just a tour…”

The eldest Winchester brother looks unconvinced, as does the younger, “They didn’t book you a ticket home did they?”

Dean swears, slamming his fist on the bar, “Goddamnit Cas!”

Sam puts a hand on his brother’s shoulder but Dean tears away to look at Castiel with eyes burning with anger, “Why can’t you just grow a spine for once and tell them no? Or do you like that they tell you when to cut your hair, when to be silent, when to take a goddamn shit? Do you like taking orders?”

His blood boils, “I could say the same of you, wearing your dad’s old jacket, driving his old car, working at his shop, drinking the same beer as him,” Before he knows it, Dean’s thrown a punch that knocks him back into his chair.

Grabbing at Dean’s shoulders, Sam yells, “DEAN! What the hell man?”

Willy looks unimpressed from the back of the bar where he was watching television on an old antenna set the size of a shoebox, “Take it outside or I call the cops, boys, you know the rules.”

Dean stalks out of the bar, followed by his brother who gives him an apologetic glance back, and drops a few bills on the bar top before following his brother.

But Castiel’s heart is racing and his jaw aches in the best way, and it’s too easy to hurtle past Sam, grab Dean’s shoulder, and punch him square in the face. 

“Cas!” Sam yells, adopting Dean’s moniker for him. 

The hit doesn’t quite knock Dean down, but it knocks him off balance enough that he’s leaning down. He spits a globe of blood-tinted saliva onto the fresh snow.

“Is this really how you wanna play it Cas? Show up to your hair-cutting appointment with a bloody face? Cause we can play it that way. Come on,” Dean opens his arms and Castiel lunges at him.

“It’s called a tonsure,” he grunts, landing a blow to Dean’s gut that barely phases the mechanic and leaves Castiel’s face open to two square elbows and a knee that just misses his groin. 

From there it just gets messy, Castiel hunched over trying to breathe right, Sam shouting above the din of their fight, muffled in the snow and slush. From his position half-bent over, he runs towards Dean, using his lowered center of gravity to knock him down, knees coming up around Dean’s legs to land two square punches on that stupid fucking jaw before Sam pulls him off.

Dean levers himself off the snow, managing not to wince, and Castiel slacks in Sam’s arms, letting the fight go out of him. 

“Didn’t know you had it in you, Cas,” He snarks, pretending this was just a normal barroom brawl. Castiel shoves past him and to his own car, wrenching the door open.

“Fuck you, Dean.” He slams the door and drives away, tires squealing.


	6. Bruised Up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nursing bruises on ego and body, Dean and Cas run away from their problems.

As soon as they get back to the apartment, Dean shoves the phone at Sam, “Call Bobby, tell him we’re coming to visit.”

“What? You’re not going to tell me what happened out there between you and Cas?”

“We fought, people fight, it happens. Oh, I guess no one fights in California, right?” Dean gets out an old duffle bag and starts shoving his clothes and toiletries in. That takes him less than a minute, so he starts packing Sam’s bag too.

“Dean,” Sam says, phone outstretched in his hands. Dean remains silent.

“Dean!”

“WHAT?”

Sam shakes his head, sending his hair flapping into his eyes, “If you don’t tell me what’s happening between you and Cas right now, I’m not calling Bobby, I’m calling Cas to ask him.”

“Whaddaya wanna know Sam? We’ve been arguing since we met, him following his father’s every whim when his brothers fucked off and left him in the shit.”

“Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?”

Dean stares at him dumbly, “What?”

“I fucked off to Stanford and left you in the shit, just like Cas’ brother left him so that he had to become a monk. I left the family business and you covered for me, just like you always do.”

“That’s not—I don’t think that about you, it’s not like I didn’t go to college.”

“You went to a state school forty minutes away, Dean, you worked your way through and you brought out this plan to graduate early the moment Bobby left and Dad wanted you back at the shop. You could have gone anywhere, but you tied yourself here.” Sam's eyebrows furrow together in that pitying way of his and Dean scowls.

“I couldn’t have gone anywhere, I didn’t have the grades, not like you.” Dean can't look Sam in the eyes. He stalks over to his bedroom and starts shoving clothes in a bag.

“Yeah, but you could have if you had stopped taking care of me and driving me to baseball and packing my lunches and making dinner every night. You’re not stupid, Dean, don’t act like it.”

“It wasn’t your fault, Sam.” He keeps his back to his younger brother, hoping the shaking in his shoulders isn't obvious.

“Yes, it was.”

“No, goddamnit, it wasn’t. But I’m not blaming Dad for breaking down after mom died, that’s not how I operate.”

“She died when we were kids, Dean! You were a kid and you took care of me _and_ Dad! It was his job to shoulder that responsibility and you had to instead. It’s his goddamn fault for not being a dad, just like it’s Cas’ parents’ fault for pushing this on him. But you guys gotta learn to take some of the blame too, because you’re both smart, you could have both done anything you wanted. And you didn’t, Dean. You turned yourself into a goddamned martyr and now you’re blaming Cas for doing the same thing.” Dean stills, hands trembling and jaw clenched. He doesn't turn around or say anything. 

Sam throws the phone on the bed in front of Dean, “Call Bobby yourself.”

Dean lets the apartment door slam before letting his head fall into his hands. 

It takes him a few minutes to get the choking sensation out of his throat. He wipes his nose and starts dialing the number.

“Singer Automotive and Scrap, and it’s goddamned Christmas so unless you’re the Pope I’m hanging up.”

“It’s Dean.”

“Not as fancy as the Pope, but I’ll take it. How’re you doing, son?”

“…Uh, I’m gonna say not great. I was thinking, would it be okay if Sam and I visited you guys for a bit?”

“Shit, what did John do now…”

“It wasn’t…” Dean didn’t know how to explain it, “Dad didn’t do anything, I just need a break from Lawrence.”

“Well, alright. Sioux Falls was getting a little dull without some young blood around. See you boys soon.”

“Yeah, will do. And Bobby?” The older man waits expectantly, “Thanks.”

“That’s what family’s for, ya idjit.”

Bobby stays on the line until Dean’s ready to hang up. After he presses the button he feels like he can breathe again. 

If he wipes his eyes on the sleeve of his flannel, well, no one had to know.

Sam comes back about half an hour later. Dean had the niggling suspicion that he had gone and apologized to Willy for the scene they caused, maybe cleaned up a bit. He was just that kind of kid. 

“When are we going?” Sam asks quietly.

“You think you could catch a few hours of shut eye?”

“Not really.”

“Then now it is.” 

Dean tried not to notice the bag of leftovers stuffed behind the driver’s side, sighing to himself.

Sam does actually fall asleep within half an hour of the car ride, and no wonder—kid had been working himself to the bone at Stanford and coming home wasn’t exactly a picnic either. Dean puts on an oldies station and lets himself drift into the ease and peace of driving, alert only to the movements of his body as they propelled the car forward through the night, mind at peace in the hum of the engine and the croon of Seger on the radio.

Sam doesn’t wake up until after Dean makes a stop for gas outside of Omaha. Dean’s already filled up the car, gone to the bathroom, and grabbed snacks from the gas station. 

Of course, the kid wakes up half an hour later and needs to use the can. Being between towns, Dean makes his brother rough it and pulls over to the side of the road.

“Ew, Dean. You should have woken me up so I could use a real toilet.”

“I’ve got hand sanitizer if you’re gonna be a bitch about it.”

“You have hand sanitizer?” Sam asks with emphasis on _you_ as if the idea that Dean would ever possess such a thing were completely out of the ordinary.

“I’m a mechanic, not a heathen. Besides, you never know whose been putting their grimy hands on anything at a gas station.” Still chuckling, Sam makes his way out of the car and goes a fair distance to do his business. 

Making up an expression of shrewd disapproval, Dean holds the cap of the hand sanitizer open. Floppy hair in his eyes and a smile on his lips, Sam holds his hands open reverently, accepting the squishy burden of hand sanitizer and promptly closing his hands and beginning to rub so that Dean wouldn’t play the old trick of squeezing long past the point of need.

“Got maybe two hours left on the road—if you want to drive, you can.”

Sam scoffs, “You know you don’t want me to drive.”

Dean smiles to himself and starts the engine, letting the sounds of the radio wash over them in comfortable silence.

Sam doesn’t fall asleep again, but turns his attention to his phone for a good part of the drive, apparently communicating with someone given his smiling at the screen, but not sharing that with Dean, letting the divide of the seats divide their attention, in the same space yet not. 

They arrive with little fanfare just as light begins to touch the horizon. There’s a chill in the air, but Dean finds the spare key as familiarly as if it were the one to his own home. 

They grab their bags and fall into their usual rooms as quietly as they can.

Dean finally sleeps.

-

Castiel slips out of his mother’s home in the early morning, leaving a kiss on Anna’s forehead (she’s always up early and understands) and a note for his mother. Feeling a shiver go over him as he steps over the threshold, he resists the urge to cross himself. 

His plane ride is short and uneventful save for the strange looks he received from airport security for arriving four hours before a domestic flight with a black eye. He recites bible verses in his head, unable to not imagine the feeling of Dean’s fists on his flesh, the feeling of his in Dean’s gut. He boards the plane silently, receiving a pitiful look from the person greeting them.

They come by with refreshment. He’s only just finished his soda water and dry pretzels when they’re told to prepare for landing. He hasn’t opened a book or listened to anything. He talked when it was necessary to be pleasant, but otherwise kept to his own thoughts. His neighbor slept, drooped in on themselves, dead to the world.

When he arrives near noon, there is a monk dressed in street clothes and holding an elegantly written card saying Castiel Milton, only his tonsure distinguishing him from the crowd of other greeters standing at baggage claim.

Castiel doesn’t have baggage to claim, and they leave to the curious looks of some spectators. A monk and a guy with a black eye walk out of an airport and then what?

They get in a sleek black car—clearly this guy was Zachariah’s chauffer—and drive in silent luxury towards the abbey.

A different monk in full robes greets him and takes him to his uncle’s office. Castiel feels his teeth grind at the opulence of his uncle’s office compared to his own cell, or the woodshop back at his monastery. He feels a silent wave of repugnance from the monk at his side, who is quickly dismissed with a flick of his uncle’s fingers—and without so much as a thank you.

“My favorite nephew. It’s _so_ good to see you, Castiel.” He gestures to the elegantly carved (Iranian, he believed, his hands itched to explore the woodwork) chair in front of his desk, but Castiel remains standing.

“I think by the virtue of being your only nephew to go into your line of work, I have to be your favorite.” 

“Ah yes, well, that’s the Milton way isn’t it?” Zachariah pauses as if at a loss for words when not placed above his guests via his throne-like chair, “Date?” His uncle brandishes a fine crystal bowl filled with sweet medjool dates. Castiel remains where he is. 

Zachariah sighs and stands up, using his desk as a support to make himself seem broader and bigger, an intimidation tactic if Castiel ever knew one, “Now, look, Castiel, I understand you’ve made friends at your old monastery, that you like being close to your mother, but your father—”

“My father,” Castiel starts, his voice low and growly in a way he hadn’t known it could be, “Is not the concern here. I am. So why don’t you talk like you’re talking to a fellow man of the cloth, noviciate though I may be, because that is the only means of respect you will get from me. Relation by blood is not enough to make your opinion any more relevant than that of another abbot.”

His uncle’s face is nearly red, and Castiel can see the jaw clench under his fat face. Then the portly man lightens his tone and plops back into his seat, putting down the crystal bowl with a chime and grabbing a pen, “Fine then. As an abbot, I suggest you get your tonsure here and take orders here in order to,” He searches for words, “Broaden your horizons. Not every monastery fits every monk, and I, as a fellow man of the cloth, just want you to be happy in your chosen occupation.” This man should have been the businessman. It was only bad luck that meant he was born a monk.

“And your desire to pass on the seat of Abbot to a blood relative has nothing to do with your… wanting me to be happy.” Castiel walks over to the elegant bookshelf and plucks off the oldest looking volume he can find, opening it, and licking his finger to turn the page, staring straight into the smarmy gaze of his greedy uncle.

Zachariah, to his credit, doesn’t bluster or immediately seek to save his precious antique book. “Now, Castiel. I know you think you can get away with this because of the failures of some of your previous siblings to step up to the plate. But you know what your father’s like, and I’m just trying to protect you from his inevitable wrath should you not be successful in—”

Castiel cuts him off again, “Devoting yourself to god isn’t like building a fortune 500 company. You aren’t any closer to god than I am, and I’m no closer to god than a homeless man on the street. The only difference is the power you wield in the eyes of the church. Making your way up the ladder is a matter of devotion and knowledge and wisdom. It’s not some title you can pass down and I’ll have no part in making a monarchy out of any monastery.” Fire boils in his blood and Zachariah finally takes a good look at his face.

“What the hell happened to you?”

Throwing up his hands in exasperation, Castiel takes off his reading glasses, revealing the full extent of his black eye, “A friend gave me some advice about sticking up for myself.”

“Some friend,” Zachariah quirks an eyebrow.

“He’s a better friend to me than you are an uncle.”

Shrugging, his uncle rationalizes, “At least I’ve never punched you in the face,”

“No, just stabbed me in the back.”

Zachariah narrows his eyes, and Castiel has never felt so much like a hapless animal in the eyes of a predator, danger lurking in those intimidation practices which before had just been farce, “Now, you listen to me. Fret all you like, fight back all you like, but we both know who you are. You haven’t got the spine to stick up for yourself, not where it counts.”

His uncle lowers himself back into his seat and Castiel feels the threat pass. His uncle rings a bell and a swift-footed monk enters, “Take him back to the airport. I’ll arrange transport back to Kansas for my nephew, it seems he was sent here in error.”

The monk doesn’t have the gall to look surprised, and soon Castiel is leaving as quickly as he came, fear and fury warring in his blood. But when he arrives at the ticket desk, he knows which has won out.

“Actually, could I switch my flight? I think my relative made an error while getting the ticket.”

The clerk lifts her eyebrows but doesn’t comment, “Alright, where would you like to go sir? Be aware you will have to pay some fees for switching so late and the tickets may be limited due to full flights.”

Castiel looks at the list of outgoing flights flashing on the television screen and thinks about who on earth could give him the advice he so desperately needed. His eyes alight on the words and he’s saying them before he realizes who he’s committing himself to see.

_Oh boy._

-  
When Dean wakes up its to the smell of eggs, butter, cinnamon, and bacon. He hasn’t been to visit Karen and Bobby in a while but he’d recognize the smell of her French toast anywhere, the amount of Saturdays and Sundays it would fill his nostrils, even before Karen could really articulate what the dish was. 

Bobby and Karen moved to Lawrence before Mary Winchester died and after Karen got severely injured in a home invasion. John and Bobby had known each other through mutual friends, car shows and the like. Karen was working on the speech impediment and other issues caused by the head injury while Bobby worked at Winchester Auto. It made it easier for Bobby so that he didn’t have to manage his own shop while taking care of his wife. 

Dean’s mother died a year after the Singers moved to Lawrence. Karen loved the boys, but she and Bobby moved away when Dean was eighteen, well after Karen had been functioning well on her own. It had been years since Mary’s death and John was no better at taking care of himself, but Dean was. Bobby could no longer financially maintain staying in Lawrence unless he sold Singer Salvage, and Dean was old enough to take care of himself, Sammy, and John. 

He hopes he never made Bobby and Karen feel bad for leaving. But because of the strain of taking care of themselves, it was usually only once or twice a year that they managed to visit, and since Sam went to school, even less. 

It took him a few minutes to get out of his tangle of blankets, but eventually he managed to put his jeans back on and shuffle down the stairs. Sam was already happily stuffing breakfast into his mouth, chattering away about Jess with Bobby and Karen. 

Bobby notices him lingering in the doorway and waves him over, “And what about you son? Or is Sam the only one with a sweetheart?”

“Sam’s the only one dumb enough to get tied down.” Karen swats him fondly with her spatula as he passes by, and he doesn’t attempt to dodge “No offense.”

“Very funny. So who’s this Cas then?” Bobby lifts a bushy eyebrow, smirk hiding in his beard.

Dean nearly chokes on his coffee, “How is that related?”

“Sam says you’ve been spending a lot of time with this person. Even got in a fight, probably the one that gave you that mark on your cheek.”

“Bobby, Cas is a dude.”

Bobby takes a sip of his own coffee and directs his gaze at his wife, “And how is that not related, Dean?” She asks, putting slices of French toast and bacon on a plate.

“Ugh, because of the obvious?”

Karen slides the plate in front of him and gives him an admonishing look.

“One: The obvious. Two: He’s a friend from college. Three: He’s literally a monk. Like actually lives at a monastery and is going to swear his life over to god.”

Bobby manages to ignore the obvious for once and analyze the other parts of his solidly built defense, “We’re just giving you crap. But seriously—you started a fight with a monk? Are you trying to get yourself smote?”

“Haha, very funny. And it’s not like he didn’t fight back.”

“But you’re admitting that you started it?” Sam points out smugly.

Dean ignores the topic in question, moving on to compliment Karen’s cooking and asking them about their recent happenings.

It takes John another week to call and ask where the hell they are, complaining about the shortage of mechanics and the surplus of cars that need servicing. John doesn’t mention his drunken antics over the holiday or even wish them a happy new year. 

Sam’s the one who grabs the phone from Dean and takes the blame, “You know what Dad, it was my idea to come up to Bobby’s. It’s not exactly my idea of holiday fun to watch you get trashed. If I had known you were going to be a drunken asshole I would have just stayed and worked over break.”

When Sam hands back the phone, Dean expects to be chewed out for Sam’s antics, but instead, his father says: “You can have another two weeks off work. That way you can finish off the holiday with your little brother. Just make sure he comes back with you to make the bus in time to get back to school.” 

Dean stares at the phone in surprise after his father hangs up. 

Sam shrugs, “Maybe he actually feels bad for once.”

Not quite believing it, Dean quirks an eyebrow and says flatly, “Yeah, I guess so.” Sam slaps him on the back and goes back to his book. 

Dean finds Bobby in the kitchen with a book and a hot toddy, Karen having gone to her book club and leaving them to their own devices. 

“Dad just called.” Bobby lifts an inquisitive brow and puts down his book.

“About time,” He comments stiffly.

“I assume you heard Sam hollering down the phone?”

“The gist of it.”

“Well, instead of chewing me or Sam out, he gave me the next two weeks off to spend with Sam.”

“That gonna be okay with the rent check?”

“Yeah I already paid up before Sam came back in case I forgot. It’s more a question of why the hell Dad would let us stay here, much less stay here and give me time off work.”

“Well, you and Sam are both adults who make their own choices. I expect he can only do so much to prevent the two of you from going off pig-headed and doing whatever you so please.”

“Yeah, well, he’s also technically still my boss, who just generously gave me two weeks off work despite never having done so in my life.”

“Your dad just wants you to be happy, wherever you are, boy.”

Dean shrugs. Bobby gets the bottle out and pours Dean a little (not nearly enough to untangle the mess in his head).

“Look, I’ve known you two since, well, since before Sam was even born, truth be told. I think John’s done getting in the way of you two growing up to be fine men.”

“Maybe out of Sam’s way.”

“And maybe you’re getting in your own way, idjit. You ever think of that?”

Dean swallows down what Bobby poured for him and tries not to glare (or give away how shit Bobby’s whiskey is with a grimace). 

“Look, if you’re interested I got a project to throw your way.”

“Yeah, sure, it’s not like I want to be sitting around with my thumbs up my ass while you start work back up.”

“I’m not putting you to work on your damn vacation, Dean, but I know you too well to think you’ll stay idle with books and antenna tv too much longer.”

“Don’t diss the antenna man, there’s some good shit you can get for free in this world.”

Bobby gives him a glare that says “Can it,” without him having to open his mouth.

Dean puts up his hands and lets himself be led out into the scrapyard. They wind their way around for awhile until happening upon the chassis and skeleton of, from what he could tell, a Prius.

Bobby stares at Dean in anticipation at he stares at the hunk of machinery.

“What am I supposed to do with a yuppie car? Crush it for you?”

Gesturing to the piles and piles of scrap and cars around them, Bobby gives up and explains it to him, “You know Sam would be able to come and see you more often if he had his own car, and they’re fuel efficient. But instead of giving him an ugly ass silver modernist thing, you can make it look like a real damn car. Even if Sam still drinks yuppie coffee and listens to NPR he won’t look like he does.”

“This is not exactly a two week project,” Dean says reluctantly while his mind furiously explores all the possibilities, what pieces he could use with the existing shape or if he’d have to reform the bulk of the engine in order to support a heavier, older frame. But, then it would get lower gas mileage. It’s all he can do not to go get his computer and load up the engineering software he hasn’t used since college.

“Maybe you can come up more often, eventually you can tow it back and work on it back in Lawrence. Or…”

“Or…?” Dean repeats as a question.

“I may look like a lowly scrap dealer but I do know a great many people who would be interested in someone who can do this kind of work. Far be it for me to take you away from your home town, but you are the only qualified person I know who can do this. Maybe you stay in Lawrence, maybe you finish this and give it to Sam this summer. Think of it as a portfolio piece. Maybe take you on your next step.”

“Bobby…” Dean hesitates.

The bearded man holds up his hands, “You don’t have to choose. I’m just letting you know that you have choices. Even if you don’t go through with this, I’m interested in seeing what you come up with. Shame to waste a perfectly good engine.” Clapping Dean on the back, he’s left staring at the hunk of metal that’s so much more than just a hunk of metal to his engineering mind.


	7. Still Fighting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Castiel makes a trip to visit an important family member.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey y'all... it's back! And I've written three more chapters and definitely intend to finish it this time. I promise. I swear. I am a literal adult now with a job so I need fan fiction more than ever.

Montreal-Pierre Elliot Trudeau International airport (helpfully replaced with YUL in short hand) isn’t that crowded at this time in the morning. It’s early for most arrivals, and departures are a different part of the airport, giving him a sense of serenity as he makes his way through customs with little difficulty.

(Though he does get asked about his bruise again at customs).

Following the buzz of people and using pictographic signs, he makes it to a taxi stand and waits in line for a taxi to become available, enjoying the chill of winter on his skin, thinking just how windy and cold it was compared to home, and eventually feeling very cold by the time he gets into a taxi. 

He called his mother to find out that no one in the family knew he wasn’t still with his uncle (and he didn’t correct her assumption). He asks for his younger brother’s mailing address, allaying his mother’s questions by saying he saw a post card at the airport and couldn’t _not_ send it to Gabe. She laughed, a real laugh, saying, “I doubt it’s anything I’d want to hear about then, knowing his sense of humor,” before rattling off the address.

“That’s his business, I think he has stuff sent there for ease. If it’s inappropriate don’t send it to his place of work, I’m sure he would find it funny, but I don’t think it’s very professional.”

Castiel writes the address down on a slip of paper tucked in his pocket and hands the taxi driver that address, not wanting to bother sounding like an idiot in his terrible French. He knew vaguely what words meant due to his time in Spain but wasn’t willing to venture he would make a convincing pronunciation. 

“Ah, yes, I know the place! The patisserie and capoterie ouais?”

“Uh, I’m not sure. My brother works at that address so that’s where I’m meeting him.”

The cabbie nods, “It may be the place next door, but I think it’s the one. Where are you visiting from?”

“Uh, Kansas.”

“You and your brother close?”

“I haven’t seen him in several years. Nor am I completely aware where he works, so it could be this bakery and whatever you speak of.”

“Capoterie.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“You’ll see. I think your brother is a very… interesting person?”

“You could call him that.”

Castiel considered himself pretty lucky to have gotten a cabbie that spoke good English, knowing how rare it was in multicultural hubs like Montreal. As they approach the street his brother’s business is on, the cabbie points out what they’re passing, including schools, museums, strange moose statues, and construction halted by the weather. 

“Toujours construction.” The cabbie says with little other explanation. 

It’s a one-way street, so they drive around the block to get to the address. “Aha, I was right! Your brother is as interesting as you say. This is the place.” The driver looks at him expectantly and Castiel digs his wallet out, paying the standardized airport to downtown fare in shiny colorful new bills from the exchange center in the airport. With a little assistance from the cabbie, they retrieve his bag, he makes a wave and says “Merci” to his unofficial tour guide, anxiety welling up in his chest as he faces the shop. He lifts the suitcase rather than wheeling it awkwardly up the iron steps. 

He’s not sure that he’s surprised at what awaits him. The place has a colorful entryway set in a stone building, cartoon condom and cupcake smiling down at visitors and passersby from the sign. Maybe it’s just his imagination, but he thinks said passersby are giving him a bit of a judgmental look, not at the object of his fascination, but at the fact that it should be an object of fascination in the first place.

As if bakeries and erotic stores normally came in pairs and he was just an ignorant tourist. 

Perhaps he was. Feeling a bit shameful, he makes his way up the steps to the entrance, simultaneously glad and disappointed to find the business open. He wasn’t entirely sure what he would have done if it hadn’t been. Found a hotel he supposed, maybe gone to one of the museums pointed out to him on the drive over.

The feeling of tightness in his chest continued to expand into his throat as he entered the store. Luckily the bakery part of the establishment was near the front, cordoned off from the “capoterie.” At least his brother could be counted on for good hygiene. Again, Castiel had mixed feelings about this until he saw his brother serving a customer a beavertail, thankfully not shaped like anything untoward. Then he sort of wishes he had thought this plan through. At all.

What the hell was he even doing here? He finds himself wondering.

That’s when Gabriel sees him. His eyes go round as saucers and he dropped the pastry tongs, “Cas?”

After taking a few steps beyond the counter to ascertain that Castiel was, in fact, standing in his bakery (myopia runs in the family) Gabe lets out a surprised, “What the hell are you doing here, man?”

“I’m…” He looked down at his shoes, nervous all the sudden, “Not entirely sure of that myself.” The woman’s transaction was luckily finished by another attendant, clad in a bright pink apron. Cas noticed she didn’t throw her change in the equally garish tip jar, and perhaps watched too long as she walked away, eager to fix his eyes on anything besides his brother’s dead stare.

“Is Mom alright? Cuz unless Michael and Dad have decided to try roping me back in, I don’t see… any reason why you would be here, really. Except maybe that shiner, but I’m not big into kissing boo-boos, as the little brother in this situation.” 

“Everything with Mom is… fine. And I am here of my own volition, surprising as that may be.”

“Fine then, why don’t you have a seat by the radiator.” He waved a hand towards a plush, velvet chair in a shade he had heard referred to as millennial pink, where there was easily enough space for Castiel’s suitcase, “You look cold. I’ll make you a mean latte and bring you our assortment to try, since you’re probably the only Milton who will ever see my shop.” He paused, chewing on his thumbnail for a moment, before bringing his hazel eyes up to meet Castiel’s, “Maybe you can figure out a better reason than ‘I don’t know’ by the time I’m done.” Gabriel huffed a laugh, “No pressure.” Castiel shouldn’t have been surprised by the sharp tone, despite the welcoming gesture to the comfortable wing-back chair. It was the voice Gabe used with Michael, a smidge below the tone he used with their father.

It was a brick wall, just as solid as the ones lining Gabriel’s artfully trendy shop. And Castiel knew he had one too, a formality of voice that shouldn’t be present in a familial relationship to keep himself from exploding outwards, messy and emotional. An iron chest where, at the center of him he kept whatever grace or soul was truly his to hold onto.

He sat on the chair, shedding his jacket and applying his mind to the problem at hand. Why was he here?

Some minutes later, Gabriel sat down with a foam-heart latte in what looked to be a bowl rather than a coffee cup, and a delicate gold platter of macarons, fondants au chocolat, and mini-eclairs. “Bol au café, pour vous and bol au chocolat pour moi.” Gabe let out a Cheshire cat grin and sipped at the frothy hot chocolate from his own bowl. 

“So you… own this establishment?” Castiel looked around without having to feign his interest. The walls were white-painted brick, and despite the cartoonish accents of bright pink, remained fairly minimalist, with marble bistro tables and comfortably eclectic furniture. 

“Yeah, I started it after culinary school, with partners and business loans and all that happy horseshit. It took me a few years to realize that people,” He coughed “—hipsters—didn’t actually want to sit around surrounded by cartoon sex toys and cupcakes. Kept the aprons, though, because I’ll be damned if some college kid in a giant plaid coat smelling of mothballs will dictate my color scheme.”

Another element of that color scheme was a human skeleton, painted pastel pink with a 70s mustache, in the corner by the blackboard menu. If anything, his brother’s eccentricities had increased since leaving the Milton family fold, not decreased. Castiel put one of the proffered packets of raw sugar into the latte, stirring around the latte-art heart, loathe to destroy the design, to blend the sweetness into the steamed milk and espresso. He took a hesitant sip but found himself rewarded-it was just upwards of the perfect temperature to drink, and tasted heavenly to boot.

“So… big bro. Gonna just leave me hanging? Or maybe I should make you try some macarons before I prod the tiger.” Castiel remained silent, but picked up one of the least brightly colored confections, “That one’s dark chocolate. You can never go wrong with chocolate.”

Castiel couldn’t help but agree, nodding fervently to show his appreciation. He had his bite and his next sip of latte before speaking, “I’m not sure yet if I have a reason for coming here, save perhaps fate. I do think I have… a point of incidence, a motivation, if you will.” Cas felt a smile pick at the left corner of his mouth, as he described the events at their uncle’s monastery. 

Gabriel had finished his hot chocolate and moved onto delicately cutting the treats in half and taking a portion for himself of each. Castiel wasn’t sure how his little brother wasn’t six-hundred pounds, but then remembered that Gabe was still in his early twenties. Great metabolism, youth, and a business owner to boot. 

And so, the older brother comes to the younger for advice.

“While I would rightly be pissed about good old Uncle Zach’s treatment, and I certainly wouldn’t want to go home after…” Gabriel points a finger at Castiel, “That still doesn’t explain your face.”

And, God help him, Castiel laughed like a maniac. Gummy smile, aching lungs and all. He knew his brother was referring to the bruises marring his cheek and jaw, blooming from purple, fading into green. He was exhausted. He didn’t even know what time it was, whether it was morning or afternoon, he had changed time zones so many times. 

“Bro, you’re losing it. I knew it would happen eventually. That’s why I left. Did you pull a Smeagol and attack yourself?”

“Gollum is the violent one.” Gabriel raised an eyebrow, “What? I read.” 

“They’re movies too, dumbass. Come on. You show up on my doorstep, I feed you, you spill the goods on why it looks like you went ten rounds with the Hulk.”

“I… uh, I had a fight with a friend.”

“At the monastery?”

“No,” He hesitated, but eventually figured, if he flew all the way here, he must have really had something to get off his chest, “I had a fight, very shortly followed by a physical altercation with a friend. From college, we uh… met at a bar a few weeks back.”

“Woah! Woah. Hold up there brother, you were at a bar?” Gabriel let a laugh through closed lips, like a puff of compressed air, “Next thing you know I’ll get you to shred at trash bar and tear up the clubs on St. Laurent.” 

“Okay, now I know I don’t get those references because I don’t live here, not because I’m culturally adverse.” The little bell above the door chimes, but Gabriel ignores it.

“Yes, but since one of the esteemed Miltons made it all the way up the Great Socialist North, I am going to have to do my brotherly duty and show you the sights, sounds, and slush of a Montreal winter… AFTER you tell me about you going all float like a butterfly sting like a bee.” He does a little circular motion with his finger, as if to encapsulate the event in the tiny circle.

Castiel finds himself explaining everything, from his feelings driving away from the monastery, and the inescapable sense of not-home that made him stop at the bar, just to avoid walking into his house and feeling that hollow feeling in his chest, and how Dean made that hollow feeling just a little bit less so, but made it just that little bit hard to breathe. Gabriel flashed him a knowing look, but Castiel ignored it in favor of detailing their many little scuffles regarding their paths in life.

“Oh Castiel,” Gabriel plucks the last morsel of chocolate off the platter, “I know why you’re here. You want to know if you can do it. What Luc and I did.”

“I—I, uh…” Fight or flight battle it out in his chest and he closes his eyes and tries to will his throat to stop closing up, for the previously comfortable heat of the radiator to not feel like a claustrophobic sauna.

“Cas! Cassie. Brother, please. Don’t shut me out. Let’s just talk. You spilled your guts, I’ll spill mine.” And so, while Castiel heart thumps away in his ears, Gabriel talks about himself, and what led him to rebel. At the tender age of seventeen, a few months from his August birthday, Gabriel graduated the private high school they had all gone to, a step farther than Luc, who hadn’t made it to his graduation day. He took photos with all of them, Castiel having just finished college, Anna preparing for her first year of college after her gap year, Michael and father, so proud and ready for Gabriel to start his summer internship before business school. Diploma in hand and robes still on, Gabriel drove away from the high school, presumably to meet them at the country club for his graduation party, and never came back.

Gabriel had always known he wasn’t going to go with the plan, “the five year plan” he called it, after Stalin’s deadly soviet strategies. He went to culinary school in Montreal, having saved up for it throughout high school. “I knew what I wanted to do. Since I was five and made those cookies for Christmas. The molasses gingerbread ones, with the cocoa and little chocolate chips, my own special addition. Mom had been crying, I think because she still wasn’t used to Christmas without Luc… And I brought her the plate of cookies and… even through all that pain, when she bit into one she smiled, so surprised at the flavor, like mixing the best, moistest chocolate cake with Christmas cookies. I knew I couldn’t zap her pain away,” He smiled ruefully, “I don’t have superpowers. But everything’s a little better with chocolate.” 

Castiel felt tears prick the back of his eyes. Gabriel smiled, eyes a little watery too, and gets up abruptly to fetch something from behind the counter.

“Made them this morning.” And there they were. The magical cookies. Castiel remembers them. He had been maybe ten or eleven, tired and hungry after coming back from his alter boy duties and they had been the best thing he’d ever tasted coming from their house. He didn’t believe that someone he was related to could have made them. They tasted like being around Dean felt. Warm, even after having cooled on the cookie sheet, like filling that empty hole where he knew family should be. 

He took the cookie as the olive branch it was. It still tasted like home.

After this talk, Gabriel (rather unusually) let the matter rest for the moment. “Well, why don’t you let me show you around? I texted for someone to come help with the shop. She just lives down the street. All the students I’ve hired live for these random shifts, lord only knows why.” Gabriel wheels his suitcase into the back, to bring to the upstairs apartment later.

“Aren’t you going to show me the rest of your shop?” Castiel asks, genuine.

“My brother, the literal monk, wants to see my sex shop?” His voice cracks on the last word. Castiel isn’t sure if he somehow faked it, but the surprise seems genuine.

“My brother is an entrepreneur and I want to see the business he owns and operates, yes. That is, if he wants to show me the fruits of his labors.”

“Now you’re making it sound creepy. Don’t say I never did anything for you.” The mood is light as they walk through a pass-through, abandoning the quaint hipster café setting. There’s a street sign, an arrow, with the word “sexe” spray painted on it in green. 

“Subtle,” He comments, hoping their camaraderie has improved enough for this small joke. Castiel often seems to misread these types of social situations, but in this case he’s in the right.

“It’s not as shameful here as it is back in the states. It’s a casual enough topic that mixing it with kitsch is a pretty successful marketing play.” There aren’t any patrons in the back at the moment, but there is a separate till being manned by an employee in a black apron. It’s oddly tasteful. The tin ceiling is spray painted black, and where there were pink accents in the front, they are black. Next to the cashier, there is a display of condoms of every different type, flavor, color, laid out like the pastries in the front. 

The back wall is a display of dildos and vibrators, and racks of clothing one would not find in a department store take up most of the other space, as well as some shelves of games like sex dice and a varied selection of lubricants. Light streams in from a large window and the white brick walls let the space breathe. 

He feels rather than sees Gabriel’s inhale, anticipating whatever Castiel may say, “How does your business fare, as far as pastries versus sex toys, if I may ask?”

Thrown for a loop, Gabriel answers honestly, in a bit of a ramble, “Well, since we’re kind of a trendy spot, usually first-time visitors walk out with a pastry and ‘une capote’ or other sexual whatsit. People usually come back for food if they like it, we have our regulars, and then the occasional larger purchase, of say a vibrator or a corset, makes up for the fact that most regulars don’t usually come back here. So, all in all, it’s about equal. We actually have two different business licenses, though. The city wouldn’t let us operate under the same license.”

“Understandably,” Castiel hums, feeling a bit like Michael or father doling out approval, “You have done extremely well for yourself, which is more than I can say for myself,” He meets Gabriel’s hopeful eyes, ones he remembers in baby form and toddler form, “I daresay you do not need my approval, nor any other Milton’s, but I am very proud of you, little brother.”

“Castiel… Mom helped me, you know. Opening a business is expensive, but she came to visit me when I was just working as a sous-chef at some shitty hipster bar à tartares that didn’t even last the first year. I baked her baguette, like I had been taught, and she said I should be my own boss, and that if I had the opportunity… she would help me. Lo and behold my buddy Balthazar from the hipster thrift shop down the road called up about a business venture and I had the money to invest. With the two of us and some financing from Crowley—a local businessman—we had this place up and running in six months.” 

“I am still proud of you, whether you had help or not.”

“Not the point.” He wags a finger in Castiel’s face, “You are not going to be thrown to the wolves if for some reason you don’t end up being happy at the monastery. And not just mom. I’ve got deeper pockets than just this place now and I’m always looking to invest.”

Castiel made a thoughtful noise in the back of his throat, “You know, if Michael heard you talking like that his head would spin. The spare son, actually being a better businessman than the heir.”

“I’d hardly call it that. But, yeah, I’ve got instincts and they haven’t led me wrong yet. I would have been miserable in the steel industry though. Not as exciting… or as high risk as my industries.” Gabe’s phone chirps, “Looks like we’re free to go. You want another coffee?”

He declines. Gabriel still snags a pastry on the way out, hollering at the girl pulling on her apron, “Thanks Meg!”

She grins and swats at Gabriel’s hand, eyeing Castiel up and down, “Your brother doesn’t look like a monk to me. Got some pretty pullable hair if you ask me.”

Castiel narrows his eyes and cocks his head to the side, “Um, I have not received a monastic tonsure, therefore my hair is, as you say, still pullable.” She leers a little, in the way he had seen Dean do when making an innuendo. 

“Paws off. Knew I should have hired you for the back, you perv.” Gabe scoffs, without any malice.

“Yeah yeah, I’m a filthy animal and you shouldn’t let me anywhere near your precious pastries, go do your tourist shit with your hot brother and leave me alone.” They’re out the door and into swirling snow moments later. Castiel can feel how cold the pavement is, even through the soles of his shoes, and somehow it feels dry despite the snow in the air.

“Alright. Time for the ultimate tourist trap.” Gabriel clicks at his key fob, unlocking a silver car nearby, “Let’s go up Mount Royal.”

A winding drive later, they’re parking in what seems to be a park, and there are even a fair number of joggers around. A couple looking wind-flushed and happy offer them their parking pass, saying it's good for another hour. Gabriel thanks them and puts the pass on the dashboard before locking the car.

“Just up there,” They walk up a path for a little while before a building looms ahead on the left, some sort of chalet, and at the front is a giant terrace of tan stone pavers, overlooking seemingly the entire city. It's just starting to get dark, as it's nearly four in the afternoon and the sky is tinged pink, with lights starting to go on all around the city. His breath puffs out as steam, but he can’t help but smile, feeling at once powerful and small with all the lives of the inhabitants of Montreal laid out plain for him to see, yet the sky looming large overhead and the drop off below reminding him of his mortality. Something in his heart tugs and an inexplicable feeling draws his gaze down, down, down. 

Gabriel’s voice is barely audible over the wind and the noise of his own mind, “When I first came here, I looked down and thought about jumping. Really, getting out of dad’s clutches. Permanently. Every time I come here, no matter how happy I am, I still have that split-second thought of—I could end it all right here, right now.”

“The first time—were you unhappy?”

“That’s the thing. No one’s ever fully unhappy. Part of me was miserable, homesick, missing you and Anna, Mom, of course. But I was also drunk and high and blissed out with a new beau, in a new city, starting my new life. And it was a beautiful summer sunset. So, I’m not sure, really.”

“Some days… I think about dying. Then I go for a run until my lungs burn and I can’t even move my body. Because I can’t think like that.”

Gabriel nods sagely, “It’s a mortal sin.”

“When I think about it like an athiest, in my weak moments, yes, it makes sense. To end my pain now… But I have to think about my eternal soul. I am selfish and human but something inside of me is more than that.” 

His brother hums, leaning forward on the wide molded concrete barrier, “I’m not that grand. Not that I’m sure I disagree, but I don’t think about divinity on the daily. No… I just know what it’d do to Mom. And, now I know I’m happy. I mean, not everything is buttercream and roses. My business partner is also my ex. My current girlfriend, Kali, is pretty on again off again. But I have a passion, and I can follow it. That’s more than a lot of people can say.”

Castiel places his hands on the cool concrete, watching as the sky fades from pink, to dusty blue grey, to black. And, against the dying of the light, the city rages on.


	8. Waiting For

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Both Dean and Castiel's family have questions about their unorthodox friendship.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warning (psuedo spoiler-y): There are mentions of a situation that could be non-con-y and mentions of roofies. It's ambiguous for now, but safe to say that's not the kind of story I write--it's one of those not remembering the night before situations, and the pieces will come together by the end of the next chapter. The lack of warning tag speaks for how it all pans out. Nevertheless, if you are worried and don't want to be triggered, comment and I can send you a summary of the chapter(s) or we can make some other arrangement.

They get dinner at a French bistro down by the water, where slick pavement fades into cobblestones and the street signs become quaintly historical and European. The prices are high, despite the jazzy crooner and upright bass player in the corner and the warm, neighborhood vibe.

“Castiel. I am going to have to insist that you get the duck confit and wild mushroom risotto. I hate when people call food orgasmic, especially given the business I run. But this is definitely the exception.”

He puts down his menu and smiles, “I suppose you’re lucky I like duck, then.” 

“Great! Do you want a starter? I want a starter. The French onion soup is to die for, of course.”

“Gabriel? Before you blabber off some obscure food facts, I just want you to know that it’s okay with me that you like men. I mean, I’m not sure Michael or dad would be okay with it, but just because I’m in the monastery doesn’t mean I’m like them, in that way.” Now he was blabbering a little too, to get over the awkwardness.

“Huh?”

He looks at his menu, rather than at Gabriel to give his younger brother time to compose himself, “Your business partner and ex? Not exactly a feminine name, Balthazar.”

“Still a little presumptuous of you.” 

“I also saw you in high school, with that boy from the public school.”

Gabe looks at him with a gaping mouth, “Sorry, I should clarify, I saw you kissing, nothing untoward.”

“And you decided to wait until the beginning of dinner for this bombshell?”

Castiel leans in close, feeling the candle’s warmth under his chin, “Gabriel, it’s not a bombshell. That’s why I’m telling you I know, so that you don’t have to come out to me, or treat it like some big thing when it’s not. Not to me, anyway.”

Throughout this trip, Castiel had felt like the little brother, but in this moment, Gabriel, for his already short stature, seemed very small. “And I suppose, big bro, that this isn’t you coming out to me.”

“What do you mean?” Castiel asks, completely guileless.

They are saved from the conversation by the appearance of their waiter. Gabriel orders a bottle of wine for the table, something red and French, but nothing Castiel has ever heard of from his father’s wine cellar. Castiel does end up ordering the French onion soup and risotto, partially because it sounds delicious, and partially because it might win him some favor in this conversation.

“Okay back to this fascinating topic…” Gabriel smiles deviously, “I was thinking, you know when you were talking about your friend, Dean-o, that maybe things between you two were more than platonic.” He holds up his hands defensively, but without any remorse in his tone, “Just my reading of your body language and all that happy horseshit.”

The waiter saves him again, the pouring and sniffing and approving of the wine giving him a moment to formulate a response. The thought had never crossed his mind, really. He was destined for the monastery and Dean was an inveterate ladies’ man. Though that did leave a question mark for Castiel’s sexuality, primarily because he had never given it serious thought. He hadn’t needed to, and had avoided the thought of himself with anyone for that reason. Castiel was going to continue avoiding it as long as he needed to, really.

“Gabriel, while I appreciate your reading of the situation, I really have never given a thought to a romantic relationship with anyone, gender aside.”

“Okay…” He sounded unconvinced, “This is going to sound gross, but I’m co-owner to a sex shop so let’s just put everything on the table—metaphorically—how do you get off? I mean maybe you’re a monk-in-training now but I’m sure teenage Castiel was going through Kleenex like the rest of us.”

“Gabriel, I have known since I was a small child that I would never marry, and never experience the full range of human sexuality. If I needed to,” He used air quotes, “ _fantasize,_ I learned not to think about any other people in such situations because it wasn’t a possibility.”

“Okay. I think I get that. And I think I don’t want to talk about it anymore." Castiel can't shake the thought that this was a conversation he had had with Dean, many years ago, in a corner at a college party after he had been hit on by an upperclassman. He misses their conversations--and wishes he had Dean's ear to bend when he was in the airport, after Zachariah. "How was Christmas, by the way? Mom still making those rolls?”

“Sorry Gabriel, would you excuse me for just a minute, I think I really need to make a call.”

He dashes down the steps out of the restaurant, a strange bruised man in a trench coat anxiously holding a flip phone to their ear outside a nice restaurant. Castiel accepts the charges to call in Canada and waited while the phone rang.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Dean. It’s Cas, please don’t hang up.”

“I have caller ID, Cas. If I didn’t want to pick up I didn’t need to.”

“Oh?” The syllable hung in the air, hopeful.

“Yeah, um. I mean we usually fight, but I don’t know what got into me last time. I wasn’t even drunk, I was just. Mean. And I don’t wanna be like that. Not to you, Cas.”

He was quiet for a moment, “You were right about, Zachariah. And… a couple other things. I don’t know that I’m going to be like my other brothers and leave the family fold. But I don’t think I have to do things exactly their way. I’m done being manipulated.”

“Really, Cas? That’s great. I’m… happy for you. I got a bead on a new-ish line of work. It’ll take some time to get into but it’s definitely more than oil changes and replacing air filters. Someone, uh, said something to me about getting out of my own way and, well, I’m trying.”

“Dean, I think whoever said that may have been right. There’s nothing stopping you or I from being happy, except ourselves. I don’t want to be passive anymore. I don’t want to... merely be my father's hammer. Something useful but disposable.”

“Are you calling yourself a tool?”

He grinned, and the smile bled into his voice, “No, I have you to call me that. And all the other nicknames you’ve fashioned for me.”

“Cas…” His name hangs in the air like a promise and Castiel wishes he could beam himself across space to stand right in front of Dean, and feel that knot in his chest loosen. 

“Look, I’m supposed to be having dinner with my younger brother. We are supposedly having some of Montreal’s finest cuisine outside of his own establishment. I should get back. I just… wanted to make things right, between us. ”

“Yeah. A little early for dinner, where I am, but I’m sure my giant brother will be wanting something soon. I’ll uh—”

“We’ll talk later?” 

“Yeah, Cas. Eat some good grub for me.” 

“Of course, Dean.” 

They linger in the dead air of the phone call for a moment. Castiel holds the phone away from his ear and snaps it shut, striding back into the restaurant with his head held high.

“How’s Dean?” Gabriel asks, spearing the beet and goat cheese of his starter on a fork.

Castiel grunts and eats his soup, poking at the cheesy crust with his spoon. It really is delicious. 

\---

Dean’s still grinning when Sam finds him, elbows deep in the guts of his future car. The younger Winchester is sweaty, with dirt flecking the back of his ankles from going on a run, yet he still winces at the sight of Dean with car oil all over his hands. Some things would never change.

“Hey jerk, I thought you were supposed to be taking time off work.”

“This isn’t work, Sammy.” He grunts as he loosens a lug bolt, “This is pleasure.”

“Should I leave you two alone?”

“Nah, we’re just getting acquainted, she and I.” He makes a lewd gesture inside the belly of the car, and Sam rolls his eyes. Little did Sam know, that was true. Dean wanted to know the pipsqueak hybrid engine inside and out before even drew up blueprints for the new car. 

“Ew. At least you’re in a good mood, now.” 

Dean smiled again, “Yeah, well Cas called and that’s all copacetic now, so I guess I’m not complaining.”

Sam did a double-take. “You guys literally got into a barroom brawl at Christmas. And one chat over the phone and you’re ‘copacetic?’ What gives, man?” 

“Not like I haven’t gotten into a brawl or two at Willy’s before.” Dean shrugs, good mood wilting under his brother’s scrutiny. Cas had called him, not the other way around, and Dean was more than okay with forgiving and forgetting if it meant he didn’t have to think about it. 

_“Do you like taking orders?”_ Dean had barked at him, angry again at Cas for being so easily manipulated by his scumbag brother and dad.

_“I could say the same of you, wearing your dad’s old jacket, driving his old car, working at his shop, drinking the same beer as him!”_

Dean shook off the memories, trying not to look too deeply into that box.

“Some bar fight isn’t the same as getting into a fist fight with your best friend, Dean. That’s a whole different ball game.” Sam’s shoulders are practically up to his ears with tension, and he gives Dean that exasperated look that lets him know his younger brother would just like to grab him by the shoulders and shake him until he came to his senses.

“What am I in kindergarten now? I don’t have a best friend to share crayons with, Cas and I are just buddies.”

“What, like you and Benny were just buddies?”

“Woah-woah-woah, what the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“I just mean that when you have a friend, a real friend beyond just work or beers or being at the same place at the same time, you devote all your social time to that one person. You’re… friend-monogamous.”

“I have friends! I have Bobby—” 

“Doesn’t count.”

“Back when Willy’s was The Roadhouse, I hung with Ellen and Jo. I have Ash at the shop. I had lots of friends in college besides Benny. I’m friendly!” 

“Dean, goddamnit, I’m not saying you don’t have friends I’m saying that certain friends, your best friends, like Benny was and like Cas—clearly—is… they’re more like family. And if we got into a fist fight—”

“You say that like we haven’t,” Dean mutters under his breath.

Sam lets out a puff of frustrated air through his nose, “It’s a bigger deal than a phone call can fix. The last time we fought like that…”

“Stanford.” The word is barely a whisper.

“We didn’t speak for a month.”

“No, you” He jabs an accusing finger into the air, “Didn’t call for a month.”

“Dean, you could have picked up the phone too.” They are silent for a moment, out of breath in that strange way fighting with loved ones leaves him. “Would you even have talked to Cas if he hadn’t called? Be honest.”

Dean shifts his shoulders, not quite a shrug, like he’s trying to feel comfortable in his own skin, shifting it away from the telltale signs of his flesh.

“Yeah. That’s what I thought.” Sam walks away, leaving Dean with the ghosts of old friendships for company.

He hadn’t thought about his friendship with Jo, and by extension, her mother Ellen, for a while. Ash had worked at The Roadhouse, doing their books and paperwork, until Jo graduated high school, same year as Dean, and decided to go to college on the east coast, and later the police academy in the same locale. Ellen had packed up and gone with her. Ash took over the books at Winchester Autobody, as well as for the newly re-opened Willy’s a few years later. They were good people. His people, really. He hadn’t spoken to them in years. Dean knew he never really forgave them for leaving. Not the same way he had for Bobby and his wife. Part of him knew that wasn’t fair, but he couldn’t help himself.

Dean had always been, for lack of a better word, clingy. He was overprotective of his brother, and hoarded away his time like something precious. He was the same way with close friends. First Jo in high school, then Benny in college, and now Cas. Part of him thought if he hadn’t been so torn up over Benny transferring to Tulane, that if he had held Cas closer, Cas wouldn’t be in this situation now. Of course, he knew, factually, that the notion was stupid. Dean could never have broken through years of that family’s brainwashing.

But that was always Dean in a nutshell, taking on burdens he hadn’t been asked to carry.

It’s colder than Dean thinks in the shed where he’s working on the car. He shivers and comes back to his body, his thoughts becoming secondary again. His head isn’t the best place to be, and he hates when Sam says something like that, sending him there. It’s too easy for dark thoughts to spiral, growing exponentially like a Fibonacci sequence. 

Dean throws his rag down and heads inside, hoping to find distraction elsewhere, with his joy from just minutes ago turned to ashes. 

\---

After dinner, with Castiel taking occasional sips of his glass of wine but never finishing it, Gabriel insists they go to a trendy bar with a massive cocktail selection, closer to downtown and Gabriel’s shop “So that we can totter our drunk asses home in the cold,” Gabriel intones sagely. 

There, Castiel meets Gabriel’s friends. Kali is effervescent in a red dress, and Castiel suddenly understands the phrase ‘dressed to kill.’ She orders something called a rum runner. Balthazar is moody in a blazer and v-neck with various rings and chains as adornments. He is nursing a drink when they get there. Gabriel’s other friends are no less eccentric. Crowley is slightly older than the rest of the group, or at least appears it, dressed all in black. He orders a scotch, neat, though he peruses the cocktail menu for a long time before giving his order to the harried server, forcing them to wait. Meg is there, drinking something with cucumber and herbs in it, but he’s not entirely sure Gabriel invited her, from the looks they’re exchanging. Though his brother had intoned his general distaste for Montreal hipsters, his friends are much more in keeping with the hipster vibe than anyone in Kansas. 

When they began ordering, everyone seemed to want to introduce him to liquor, shouting their preferred beverage over the table. 

“I do not wish to become intoxicated,” Castiel says, to little avail. 

Gabriel points to a part on his menu which says that they can all be made alcohol-free, and, blessedly, does not make a virgin joke. 

They try to help him narrow down a drink by the categories listed in the menu. “So, Clarence,” Meg purrs, “Are you ‘robust, intense, powerful and concentrated,’ or ‘accessible, delicate, light, and soft?”” 

“My name is Castiel.” He finds himself confused by the brunette. Her behavior is not analogous with anything he has experienced before and it makes him edgy and nervous.

“I know angelface.”

Kali seems bored with the whole affair and shoves her drink under his nose, “Here, why don’t you try our drinks and see what you like.”

Since the others seem to like that plan, he obligingly has a sip from everyone’s drink, except Crowley’s, and decides to order what Balthazar is having, the bar’s variant on an old fashioned. 

The taste is strong, but the bourbon and bitters mingle on his tongue pleasantly and he quite enjoys the three dark, whiskey soaked cherries impaled on the stirrer. “No need to ease into it, bro,” Gabriel jokes, “I’m gonna go snag us a game.”

The bar has a few board games and cards for the patrons to play, and playing jenga while drinking makes as much sense as anything to Castiel in that moment. He thinks Gabe might have grabbed the game to try and ease the tension at the table, but unfortunately it seems to have the opposite effect as they argue about rules.

“You HAVE to play the block that you touch. That’s basic jenga rules, you morons!” Crowley spits with no feigned vitriol.

“You can’t take a piece from the top layer, Gabriel, that defeats the entire purpose of the game!” Balthazar says, speaking above a mumble for the first time that night.

Gabriel shrugs and takes the piece off anyways to avoid breaking the other rule, “Hey, don’t blame me, the Milton house was more bible study than board games.”

“Gabriel, don’t make our family sound like religious fanatics just because you don’t know how to play jenga.” Castiel warns, with no real threat in his voice. 

“How do you know how to play it?” Gabriel’s tone turns petulant. 

“Monks are permitted to have fun, you know.” 

“If only this were drinking game jenga…” Kali muses, not actually sounding all that upset about it while hailing a waiter to order her next drink. 

“A world of no,” Balthazar mutters under his breath. 

“Do you have something to say to me, emo boy?” She sets her arms akimbo, leaning into his space aggressively. 

“It’s not 2006, Kali dear, please do update your insult book.”

She throws her hands up in the air, gesturing at Gabriel in a fit of exasperation, “That’s it, I’m done with both of you!” She storms out of the bar with her purse and coat in her hand, into the swirling snow.

“Hey, Kali, baby, come back!” And Gabriel is out the door after her, coat also in hand. Clearly neither of them were worried about the cold. 

Balthazar waits a few moments to finish his drink before stumbling out, heading in the opposite direction. He doesn’t appear to have brought a coat at all, and Castiel worries about him getting home in the threatening weather. Crowley clearly senses the worry in his eyes.

With a grand sigh, as if he were being imposed upon greatly, Crowley gets up and slowly puts on his own coat, something expensive by the looks of it, “I’ll make sure the lover boy gets home safe. Nothing to worry your pretty little head about.” Without another word or a backward glance, he also leaves the bar.

Meg’s sing-song voice betrays her smile, “And then there were two.”

“I should probably go find my brother. And check that all the tabs are settled.” He feels uncomfortable, with a sort of low-level, anxious feeling just below his stomach. 

“Trust me, Clarence, either your brother will come back for you after Kali tears him a new one, or they’re going to be cooped up all night making the beast with two backs.”

Castiel grunts, miserable at the idea of being at the mercy of Gabriel and Kali’s whims, “I didn’t take you for a Shakespeare fan.”

“Lit minor.”

“Really? My sister is taking a literature minor too…” Meg is grinning at him like she won the lottery, and he realizes he has made a ‘someone wrote gullible on the ceiling’ mistake, “Oh. You were joking.” It wasn’t very funny, to him.

“Yeah, no, I’m actually doing biology. But it’s cute that you believed me. I’m thinking about nursing school, after this.” 

Castiel is curious about this, and they get to talking about the differences between the Canadian and United States schools, and before he knows it he’s had a second of the strong drink, and they’re huddling through the snow to a nearby Irish pub with far cheaper drinks. He feels fine, and he’s certain he weighs enough that with his consumption of a glass of water per drink, he should be fine. So he drinks some more, this time Quebec hard cider, which is light and refreshing and far more pleasant than beer to him. 

They’re talking and everything is loud and feels good and a little in slow motion. 

He wakes up in Gabriel’s apartment with a pounding headache no clue of how he got there.

There’s a note in unfamiliar handwriting, sitting under a glass of water and a bottle of ibuprofen.

_Thanks for a great night, Clarence. XOOOOOOOO Meg_ There’s a lipstick imprint on the paper, red and jarring in its femininity. 

After he drinks the water and takes the meds, he feels his phone vibrating in his pocket with a text alert. He takes a minute to adjust his eyes to the bright light streaming in the window before he can bear to look at the phone. 

The most recent alert is from Dean, but there are ten unread messages from Gabriel, so he checks those first. The first seven are some variant of “WHERE ARE YOU?” from around two in the morning, and the next three begin to piece the puzzle together in his mind.

3:00 A.M.-Okay, so I told Meg where the spare apt key was. She already has the key to the store cuz she locked up. I’m never going to feel safe again.

3:05 A.M.- I really hope she didn’t roofie you or anything. I’m the shittiest brother and I really don’t blame you if you never wanna speak to me again after this.

3:20 A.M.- This relationship stuff is hard. I’m sorry I bailed. Tbh I thought Crowley would be the one taking care of you if things went right with Kali. Then I get this photo from Meg. Did I mention I was sorry?

The image is attached, of him slumped outside the apartment, but luckily not out in the cold. He can’t see much more than that on his phone. Meg must have been unnaturally strong to have gotten him up on the couch. Not for the first time that morning, he wished she had left a more verbose note, since he didn’t remember much of anything after leaving the first bar.

Consigning these things as just punishment for his gluttonous behavior the previous night, he tries to put them out of his mind. The phone buzzes again, reminding him to read unread messages. He opened the messages.

4:47A.M. – this is so so dumb but sam thinks 1 convo shouldnt of solved whatever it was we were fighting about. Idk I’m drunk now and I just think that we werent really hitting each other, 

The messages were separated because of their length.

2/2- like we just took our anger at ourselves out on one another? im not makin any sense but yeah I think our convo solved it cuz wre not gonna do that again. Right? good. Gnight cas

Kansas was only an hour behind. He was passed out at the time. He didn’t have the mental ability to discern what Dean was trying to get at, so he typed out an unrelated response.

8:32 A.M.- Have you ever lost time/memories? specifically from drinking overmuch. 

Rolling over, he surrendered back to the tender mercies of sleep. 

\---

Dean wakes up around nine in the morning, in Bobby’s guest room, on the trundle bed Karen bought for them, because his little brother is a jerk about the fact that Dean is shorter. Sam is long gone, bed made and running sneakers no longer resting by his bag. 

He isn’t entirely sure what made him drink about half a bottle of whiskey, but he knows he regrets it. The more often he drinks (a lot, lately) the harder it is for him to feel numb, so the more drinks he has to imbibe. Knowing John’s history (and present) with substance abuse, Bobby worries for him, and tries to keep them sticking to beer when they’re in Sioux Falls. Not a problem for Sam, who was still barely twenty (yet only two years old and squalling in Dean's mind).

Out of habit, he checks his phone to see a text from Cas. 

7:32 A.M.- Have you ever lost time/memories? specifically from drinking overmuch.

Though his head feels like a herd of cattle just stomped through there, he’s dialing Cas’s number before he can stop himself. 

“Hello?” The voice on the phone is gruffer than its usual sound. Sometimes Dean thinks that Castiel is like a giant herbivore who swallows rocks to grind up food in its gizzard, and a few got lodged in his voice box. (Sam was obsessed with dinosaurs and Jurassic Park growing up, sue him.)

“You okay?” 

“Uhhhmm.” More gravel. “I may have gone, what Gabriel calls ‘bar-hopping.’ I’m fine, I was with a… friend. I think. But I drank quite a bit.” Dean hears the loud clang of pots and pans in the background, another male voice saying something indistinguishable.

“You? Drank? And what do you mean you think it was a friend? Did you get roofied?”

“Gabriel asked me that too… I really don’t think so. Meg is… abrasive and strange, but I think her heart is in the right place.”

“Well, hopefully it was a good night. Any lipstick on your collar?” He could practically see Cas blushing on the other side of the line as he rustled in the pile of dirty clothes for his shirt.

“Oh. Um, yes, there is. Same shade as… yeah. I don’t remember anything after the first bar.”

Dean swallows past the lump in his throat, “Um, well to be fair if you were drunk enough… your dick wasn’t taking much interest, so you haven’t broken your vows, or anything.” 

“I haven’t taken any vows, yet, Dean. Hold on a second.” The receiver is muffled, with a hand against it, though Dean can hear two distinct voices. 

“Gabriel says that Meg texted him after his several angry voice messages. Apparently, we—and I’m quoting here—‘had a hot make out sesh against a brick wall’ and nothing more. Well, there are a few more expletive filled texts on trust and ridiculous accusations but none of them are relevant.” Dean isn’t so sure the accusations are that ridiculous. Even a ‘make out sesh’ with someone like Cas was a big deal. If he was too drunk to remember the next morning, he really was too drunk to consent. For Dean, well, he had done worse a lot drunker, with people who were just as drunk. But he wasn’t Cas, he wasn’t pure like that.

Something inside Dean’s chest clenches at the imagery of someone touching Cas that way, and he tries to put on the man’s man façade again. Guy talk, he can do guy talk, that was basically his whole life. "So you had possibly your only kiss ever and you don’t even remember it? That blows, man.”

“I’m not sure it does, blow, that is. I’d rather not know… whatever it is that I’m missing.” The line is silent and Dean’s chest tightens even more, aching with sympathy and something else, “Um, Gabriel says breakfast is ready and even if I’m not hungry I should eat it.”

“Eggs and bacon?” Best hangover cure there is, in Dean’s humble opinion.

“And fried potatoes, apparently.” Dean’s stomach rumbles. 

“Man, I wish my brother went to culinary school.” His own brother pokes his head in, apparently using his sixth sense to come in at the most awkward moment, “Alright, Cas. Feel better.”

“Thank you, Dean.” Sam is staring at him, expectantly, leaning against the door jamb. Dean tries to pretend he doesn’t care, saying what he wants to say. But of course, he is deliberately vague.

“And buddy? Don’t sweat what happened. You’re gonna be a-okay.” Sam quirks a brow and Dean flips him the bird. 

“Yes. I expect I will have to be.” And with that, Castiel hangs up. 

Dean idly flips through his text messages and sighs at the unfortunate things he sent earlier while Sam stares at him. “You guys talk some more?”

He grunts, ignoring the obvious, “Cas’ brother took him out drinking. He was trying to piece together his night on the town. Sought out my expert advice.” He didn’t mention that he had called Cas, not the other way around. 

“The evil older brother who only wears Armani?” Sam’s confusion makes him laugh. Michael, from everything Dean knew about him, was not the sort of older brother to take his little brother out to paint the town. Especially when said little brother was supposed to become a monk.

“The younger, disappointment brother who Cas isn’t supposed to talk to, much less visit.” 

“Ah. I take it this is a good sign?” Dean isn’t very happy about whatsherface getting her hands all over a not-that-consenting Cas, but he is a little proud that Cas even made it to Montreal instead of languishing in Zachariah’s abbey. 

“Maybe, maybe not.” His ambivalence isn’t faked. 

“Like Bobby says you working on that car husk is a good sign but won't tell me why?” The bad sign of Dean drinking so much whiskey is left unsaid. 

Dean grins, not willing to give up the ghost on Sam’s birthday present in the making quite yet, “Maybe. Maybe not.” 

“Karen made you breakfast. I think she’s glad you finished Bobby’s whiskey instead of him. Eggs and bacon.” Sam gives him a bracing clap on the shoulder and offers his hand to help Dean up off the trundle. 

Dean’s back cracks in protest and Sam sighs, “You really should start running.”

“And ruin my knees? I’ll pass.” Sam laughs and ducks the slap heading towards the back of his head. 

Things are good again, without a word said about the content of their last fight. He hopes the peace will last, on both fronts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did not mark this rape/noncon for a reason--all will be explained. It's important to show how people (even Castiel himself) underestimate him because of his chosen vocation.


	9. The Other Shoe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The boys figure out their next steps. One step forward, two steps backward, huh?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW (Continued): So... since being very drunk makes it hard to consent, there is still some ambiguity. It's cleared up within the first segment of text (before the little dashes). Like I said, comment if you still want to read but are worried about being triggered.

Gabriel takes the day off work and nurses Castiel through his first real hangover. He thought the dehydration and headache from drinking a little bit of vodka in college had been the worst. Recovering from being black-out? The literal worst feeling ever.

After being served a truly delectable plate of breakfast (with Gatorade to “replenish his electrolytes”), he pukes up breakfast immediately after taking two bites of eggs. He continues to upchuck blue Gatorade and water another two times, leaving his throat raw, his stomach pained, and his teeth scummy feeling. It takes until about 4pm for him to hold down some ginger ale and crackers. Then they move onto ginger tea, and he can eat something by dinnertime. 

“I am never drinking again.” Castiel promises after the third time praying to the porcelain god. 

Gabriel sighs and runs a hand through Castiel’s greasy hair, stopping to feel his clammy forehead for signs of a fever. “That’s what they all say, kiddo. Then they’re drinking again the next week.”

In lieu of responding, Castiel lets out another mouthful of stomach acid and water. Gabriel makes a face, “I’m so firing Meg.”

After taking a sip of water from a proffered Dixie cup, Castiel swishes it around and spits it in the toilet, flushing it to get rid of the visually disturbing substance inside, “No, don’t. I think—I think she was nice to me. From what I remember. Besides, she needs the job to save for nursing school.”

Gabriel sighs, “Cas. I’ve made a lot of mistakes. Look at last night and how clearly I’ve fucked up my relationships with the first two people to give a damn about me since I left Kansas. But I can’t look at her face every day knowing she took advantage of you. I’ll give her a good recommendation—I’ll even let her resign so she doesn’t have to say she was fired. She won’t have a problem finding another job, but she needs to know that it’s not okay, and that actions have consequences.”

Castiel reluctantly shoves his phone at Gabriel, with the texts from Meg open (somehow she got his number). “If Meg is to be believed, I made a very good impression at not being very drunk.”

12:00 P.M. - Hey Clarence—just to clarify, I didn’t start anything. I flirted, and I helped you order drinks, but you pushed me against a wall (in a very sexy way if I might add) and I wasn’t going to say no to that.

12:03 P.M. – You really REALLY didn’t seem that drunk tbh. You were all hot and growly and aggressive and I’m only human… I couldnt resist that hunk o hunk o burning love. And I wasn’t exactly sober either. 

12:06 P.M. – I pretty much never excuse or explain my behavior. but clearly you have a brother who gives two shits about you and I don’t want to be on his bad side, considering he is my boss.

12:07 P.M. – Best of luck with the hangover. Xoxo Meg

His brother lets out a frustrated huff, “For how much of an asshole she is, she’s honest to a fault usually.” He claps Cas on the back and he winces, “Getting in fist fights, drinking, and good old fashioned necking. I guess you’re not so junkless after all.”

“Yes. I really didn’t expect such behavior from myself. But like you said, Meg doesn’t strike me as a liar. I suppose the alcohol must have… altered my behavior.” Cas says it around the bitterness in his mouth, before turning to brush his teeth. 

Gabriel lets out a peal of laughter and actually slaps his knee, “Oh no Cas. I’ve done a lot of drinking in my day and one thing I know is that a drunk is more like their true self then they ever are sober. If you’re a mean drunk, but nice normally, you’re repressing something when you’re sober. If you’re a sex machine drunk…” He lets the sentence speak for itself.

Castiel spits the foamy toothpaste into the sink. His mouth still doesn’t feel clean. “I’m not repressing anything, Gabriel. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to shower. I feel wretched.”

Sighing, Gabriel puts up his hands in defeat. “Towels are in the cupboard.”

Preparing to shower, Castiel takes his phone out of his pocket to put it on the counter. On impulse, he opens a blank text message, and types out. _I wish I had someone to blame this hangover on like I did back when you made me drink in college. It’s far easier to feel miserable when you can be angry at someone other than yourself._ He sends it.

After he’s disrobed, but the water is still warming up, the phone buzzes. Dean sent a photo back, a selfie. He's frowning exaggeratedly--he looks pale and a bit sick, but infinitely better than Castiel does. 

12:35 P.M. – you and me both buddy

Apparently, sick as he is, Castiel’s dick is blindingly oblivious to decorum. It perks up in interest as he enters the warm shower. He ignores the half-chub, like he often does, expecting it to go away soon enough. As he soaps up his sore muscles, he tries not to imagine it, pushing someone up against a wall out of lust, cold air biting on his fingers but heat mingling between open mouthed kisses.

He gives himself an experimental tug, and the erection becomes full-fledged. His typical masturbation was all about manual stimulation, and usually took forever due to his refusal to use his imagination. But the idea of himself taking charge in a sexual situation is something he had never thought of, and now he can't get it out of his head. When, in his mind, Meg’s soft body and puffy winter coat metamorphosed into hard, muscular lines, a familiar leather jacket, and full lips surrounded by stubble, he was close enough to let his mind go there. His orgasm was so strong his legs nearly buckled. 

“Fuck,” he said aloud, as he cleaned himself and the shower up with a few swipes of his hand, willing his trembling thighs to still. 

Gabriel was right and he didn’t know what to do with that information.

\---

Dean and Sam’s vacation at Bobby’s passes without much hubbub. One day after picking up groceries for the Singers, they get pulled over in the Impala, by the sheriff, one Jody Mills. She sidles up with her hand on her gun and Sam freaks out a little. 

Apparently, they had an APB out on someone with a black classic car, but it was not them, Jody determined after running their plates, “What’d they do, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Grave desecration.” Jody says, tone dead serious suddenly.

“Eugh. People are freaks.” Dean sympathizes, wondering what strange fetish led a person to mess with someone’s final resting place. 

“Yeah, well I’m not disagreeing with you. What’re you boys doing in town?”

Sam answers, “Visiting Bobby Singer. Guy’s kind of an honorary uncle to us.”

“The Singers are good people. I was just a deputy when they had that home invasion. Nasty stuff. They doing okay?” Jody seems to care, and Dean is glad of the small-town charm. Normally when he was pulled over, cops automatically assumed he was a trouble maker. Probably because of the drunken disorderly in college marring his record.

“Good as can be. Business is good, no health troubles.” Dean is deliberately vague, since he isn’t sure how well Jody knows them and doesn’t want to reveal something Bobby is uncomfortable with the town sheriff knowing. 

“I’m glad. You boys drive safe, and feel free to call if you see my perp’s car.” She gives them a card with a smile and walks back to the police car. They wait until she drives off before getting out of park and heading back.

“Let’s go, we got perishables.”

“Dean it’s like twenty degrees.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Dean agrees, driving back to Bobby’s at the speed limit. 

Sooner rather than later, they’re saying goodbye. Dean has already made plans to come by in a few weeks and start work on the car after his parts come in. Neither he nor Bobby, by an unspoken bond, mention the project to John. 

Karen gives Sam a long hug, looking small in comparison to his massive frame, she whispers, (not very quietly) “Don’t be a stranger, okay? I know you’re busy with school but I’m sure Bobby would appreciate it if you could pick up the phone every once in a while.”

Bobby scowls, “Subtle, Karen.”

“To avoid any other accusations of subtlety, Dean,” She gives him a hug, swaying them back and forth, “I’ll just bribe you with pie.”

Dean smiles, “I'm so not above bribery.”

Bobby walks them to the car, where they say their goodbyes, “Karen means well, but you know how she is. You’re damn near the closest thing she has to having kids of her own.”

Dean, ever the master of maneuvering around moments, snarks, “Yeah, and I’m sure you hate us.”

“Well, keep drinking my whiskey and I could maybe move you down to dislike.” They embrace quickly, giving firm pats on the back to reaffirm masculinity, and Dean goes to start the car while Bobby says goodbye to Sam. 

A few minutes later and they’re still talking, so Dean rolls down the window, “You two done growing lady parts?” Sam rolls his eyes, and Bobby makes a disgusted noise before they hug and Sam gets into the car.

Bobby waves at them, growing smaller and smaller in the rear-view mirror until they turn past the pile of scrap that marks the property line, and he disappears. 

“You know,” Sam says, in the voice that sounds-casual-but-generally-precedes-a-Talk, “You don’t have to be allergic to feelings to be manly. No one will think any less of you because you have a greater emotional capacity than a teaspoon.”

Dean raises one eyebrow, and indulges the talk. “Dad will.”

Sam is quiet for a moment, leaning his head on the cold window as they merge onto the highway, “He would. But Dad is going to die one day, along with lots of people with values like his. Are you really going to live your life by rules you don’t agree with just because it’s easier?”

He sighs, transferring lanes to pass a semi. “Dad’s not just some old fogey. He was a marine and he served our country. Can you say the same of the hippies in California who’re teaching you this crap?” 

“Don’t take this conversation back to the seventies, Dean. We weren’t alive then, and things weren’t black and white then. Just like they aren’t now.” Sam’s smug. Dean can’t help but think he’s not going to be a very good lawyer if he can’t wipe that look off his face—any other lawyer is gonna want to smack it off him. 

“Look,” Dean sighs, for what feels like the millionth time, “Let’s not make this a whole fight and be pissy and silent the whole ride home. It’s not that big a deal. I’m not good with emotions. Lots of people aren’t. That’s life.” 

Sam laughs a little, mockingly, “Yeah. Not being good with emotions got you into a fist fight with your best friend. The only time you two aren’t fighting is when you’re not in the same country. That sound healthy to you?”

“Don’t put that on me, Sam. Cas isn’t exactly a wealth of emotional maturity either.”

“Yeah. You two are quite the pair.”

Dean plays music for the rest of the drive.

\---

Castiel ends up spending two weeks in Montreal, before he decides he needs to go back to the monastery. He misses the peace and quiet. The chaos of the month had been too much. Two years of silent nights and the hum of the woodshop in the day would take his mind off... everything. His mother calls him a week in. She says she’s happy that he’s spending time with his brother, but wishes Castiel had more time to spend with her before he began his two-year novitiate.

“Well, that’s why I’m just outside Lawrence, Mom. I’ll never be that far away.” 

“Yes… speaking of the location of your monastery. Your father is not happy with you for spurning his brother’s...” She searches for the word, “Generosity. I thought I would give you fair warning. He’s going to call.”

Castiel had been ignoring Michael’s calls, not wanting to face up to his family quite yet. He would not refuse his father’s call. The Milton's third son was ready to demand what he wanted, and he would not do it through the eldest.

True to form, his father called almost exactly twenty-four hours after his mother had. “Castiel.”

“Hello, Father.” 

“You have disappointed me. When Zachariah called me… I thought he must have been playing a prank.”

“Your brother is not exactly the joking type.”

“Yes. Well, let’s see if his account lines up with yours. You come into his office with a black eye, disrespect him and his entire monastery, and refused his generosity.” There’s that word again. Because corrupting the ascendancy of the Abbot position was so generous. “Is this true?”

Castiel gulps, straightening his spine. “More or less. I did have a black eye, but I don’t believe I disrespected his monastery. In fact, refusing his offer was a sign of great respect for his monastery, though perhaps not for him.”

“And why, pray tell, don’t you want to become Abbot one day? It is not a paltry thing to throw away.” There's no curiosity in his tone.

“I do not crave power the same as you or Michael or Zachariah. My decision to become a monk is so I can live a life of peace with my devotion to God. At this moment in time, I would like to do that in Kansas, at the monastery with which I did my postulancy. I do not appreciate being manipulated into doing otherwise with a,” he growls, “One way ticket!” 

“Don’t pretend this is a choice, Castiel. You are upholding the Milton name, not your own.”

Castiel wants to crush the phone in his hands and end this conversation. He covers the receiver and punches the wall, the pain clearing his mind. “No, Father. This must be my choice. Or I will not do it. If you seek to take my free will, then… then I will reclaim it myself like Gabriel and Lucifer did.”

His father is silent for a long time. Castiel thought, for a moment, that he had hung up, but he could still hear shallow breathing on the other end of the line and no dial tone. “I will concede to your wishes on location and position, for now.”

A sigh of relief escapes his chest, “But know this,” Father continues, “If you, for any reason, decide not to devote yourself to the monastic life… Anna will have to take your place.” 

The blood that had been running hot in anger a moment ago turns cold, his heart thumping in his ears like an inescapable drumbeat. His father had never said anything like this before. Castiel had never been enough of a problem to merit such a threat. And now… now he never would be again. He couldn’t risk Anna’s happiness. He wouldn’t. 

In the back of his head he hears himself say, “Yes, Father. I understand.” He even makes a bit of small talk before they say their goodbyes. But all of this is secondary. It’s like he’s watching himself from across the room. He is aware of himself, of closing the phone, of sitting down, of his nails digging half-moon circles into his palms, of his sluggishly bleeding knuckles. But none of these things feel like they’re happening to him.

He is wearing sweatpants and a hoodie. He had only just woken up and scrambled a few eggs for breakfast, while Gabriel worked downstairs. He catalogues these facts as he laces up his running shoes. He goes out the side door so that he doesn’t have to confront his brother.

He runs until he can’t anymore.

Gabriel finds him on Mount Royal. He ran all the way up there from Gabriel’s shop downtown and then around the paths, up to the lookout. He doesn’t want to feel that urge to jump, lest it be more than just a whim, so he runs past the lookout, and up the paths to the cross, standing tall and proud on the mountain. Castiel is sitting on a bench across from the giant, illuminated crucifix when Gabriel stomps up to find him, carrying a puffy jacket in one hand.

Castiel accepts the jacket with a grunt. They sit and stare at the cross. “Did you know that there’s been a cross here, in some form or another, since 1643?” 

Gabriel shrugs in response, he had read the plaque years ago but never paid it much mind, “I’m not surprised.”

Castiel doesn’t say anything else. “Mom called. Said Dad seemed mad after talking to you so maybe I should check on you. Went upstairs and you were gone.” He laughs, mirthless, “You gave me a good scare.”

“How’d you find me?” 

“Mostly? Guesswork. Went to a few churches, the Notre Dame Basilica, the Oratoire du St. Joseph. Then I looked up at the mountain and saw the cross. Smacked myself in the head real good for being such a dummy too.” He looks down at Castiel’s bruised knuckles, still red, and murmurs, “Looks like you gave my wall a run for its money.”

“Sorry about that.” Castiel says, recalcitrant.

“It’s brick. It definitely did more damage to you than the other way around.” More silence, “What’d he say? To make you run all the way up here? Must’ve been something bad. Dad doesn’t do too well with people who fight back.”

“If… If I don’t take my novitiate in January, if I don’t devote my life to the monastery, then Anna will be forced to take my place, just like I took Lucifer’s. She would have to become a nun.”

“Fuck. Dear old Dad, huh? Get thee to a nunnery. Damn.”

Castiel hums in agreement. He had never considered that Anna, being a woman, would be forced into the legacy of unhappiness foisted upon the male Milton children. Yet here they were. 

“Luc didn’t really think about the rest of us when he left. I suppose I didn’t either,” Gabriel muses, with an uncomfortable note in his voice.

He snorts, creating a cloud of condensation in the cold air, and looks his brother in the eyes, “You wouldn’t even have been born if Lucifer hadn’t left… Anna either. You never even met him did you? You were just a baby when he left us.” 

Gabriel shakes his head, “I don’t remember him from then, no. Shortly after I left… I drove down to see him, before I headed up here for culinary school.” He chuckles, an unhappy sound, “Make sure I was making the right decision. Spent half the summer with him, the wife and kid. Kids plural, now. It was so… normal. Their daughter was so happy and carefree. I… don’t think I had ever seen any of us like that, even Anna. There’s this reserve, this painful sense of responsibility that we all had from day one.”

“I’m not sure I want kids, but I just couldn’t get over it. The idea that there is a generation of Miltons out there who aren’t messed up in the head because they have to follow this stupid ancient doctrine of heir and spare, who aren’t constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop. That’s what I wanted to reclaim, for myself.”

He looks at Castiel for the first time since starting his story, eyes clearing up from their mistiness, “Aw, Cas. I’m sorry. That was stupid of me to tell you.”

Castiel isn’t mad, and his tone reflect it, “A bit. You get to decide if you want kids or not. You can have a boyfriend, girlfriend, whatever you want. And… I want that for Anna too.”

“What about for yourself?” Gabriel’s eyes are wet with unshed tears.

Castiel feels something wet and warm on his cheeks. He’s crying and his nose feels like it’s going to drip any minute, his breath shallow. “I can’t mourn something I never had. I never had a hope, Gabe.” He looks down, ashamed as his chest heaves with the little hiccups of trying to prevent a sob. He doesn’t know why he’s so upset. 

“Yeah, you did, Cas." Gabriel says softly, "I’m sorry.”

Gabriel puts his arm around him and Castiel lets the dam break.


	10. To Drop

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "And you can hear the man in the apartment above you  
>  taking off his shoes.  
> You hear the first boot hit the floor and you’re looking up,  
>  you’re waiting  
>  because you thought it would follow, you thought there would be  
>  some logic, perhaps, something to pull it all together  
>  but here we are in the weeds again,  
>  here we are  
> in the bowels of the thing: your world doesn’t make sense.  
>  And then the second boot falls.  
>  And then a third, a fourth, a fifth." -Richard Siken, "Boot Theory"

Sam goes back to school in mid-January. They make tentative plans to see each other over his spring break. It’s bittersweet. Dad sees him off at Dean’s apartment before Dean drives Sam to the bus stop. It’s only the second time they see each other over the break, and they still can barely stand each other.

Dean feels like his family, fractured so many years ago by his mother’s death, is finally starting to shatter.

He sees Cas one more time before Castiel goes into his two-year novitiate. Castiel texts him "Heading to monastery Thursday, meet up sometime tomorrow?" Dean is floored. Somewhere, deeply buried, he honestly hadn't thought Cas would go through with it. He went all the way to Canada, to visit his brother who _rebelled_ and decided the life was for him anyways? Dean felt like someone was playing some great cosmic joke on him, taking away everyone he ever cared about. 

Castiel visits Dean at his apartment before Dean has to head to work. Cas always entered a room looking like he just came out of a tornado, and that morning was no exception. His cheeks and nose were pink from the cold, making his eyes look even bluer. Dean can’t help but notice the bags under his eyes, though.

“Hello, Dean.”

Dean’s mouth dries up at the phrase. He feels like it might be the last time he hears it. He gestures for Cas to come inside, unable to put words to small talk lest the feeling trapped in his chest escape him through his open mouth. They lean against Dean’s counter, sipping coffee. Sitting would make this seem like a real goodbye, and neither of them can take that. So they stand.

Castiel’s lips and hands look chapped, like he’s been in the cold without gloves. _Probably running._ He can’t tell whether the redness on the knuckles is from wind-burn or something else. 

“I’m supposed to go back to monastery tomorrow. I’m spending today with my mother and Anna. I’m not getting a tonsure, but this is the next step, to permanently becoming a monk, taking temporary vows. I—my father… After I went to Montreal and disobeyed his orders regarding Zachariah, he told me. Well, it doesn’t matter now, I suppose. But I’m committed to this course of action now that he has decided I can stay in Kansas, since that is what I had always wanted.” Cas speaks like he’s trying to make a confession, like someone will chase him and shut him up if he doesn’t speak quickly enough. Dean places a hand over his on the counter, open, as if to soothe him. It’s more for Dean than for Cas, though. 

“So, you’re not cutting your hair?” Dean asks, stupidly. He can’t help but pass a hand through the jet-black mop, trying to pass it off as casual. He tries to ignore the little shiver that passes through Cas’ body at the touch. He definitely ignores the jolt of heat in his belly.

“Um,” Cas licks his lips, searching for words, “No, it was never necessary, and I don’t want to.”

Dean finds his mouth dry again, “Good,” he manages.

“Yes. I’m… finding this harder than I thought it would be.”

“Well. Maybe I should make it easier.” He reaches over and puts Cas’ empty mug in the sink, using it as an excuse to turn away from him, so that Cas couldn’t see the, wetness in his eyes, “Goodbye Castiel.”

“Don’t be like that Dean. Making me mad at you won’t make this easier.” He feels a gentle hand on his shoulder, and, despite himself, turns around to meet him.

“Sorry, Cas.” It comes out weak, and pathetic, but just for these ten minutes, Dean doesn’t want to pretend he can’t feel anything. Because he has that freedom. Cas won’t have that in a day. 

“Dean, this isn’t really goodbye… it’s not like I’m not dying.” Those eyes implore him, hollowing him out, and Dean has to look away.

“Then stop acting like it!” He says petulantly. 

Castiel smiles with half his mouth in a grimace, eyes watery, “It really isn’t. I’m starting a new life. A different life. It doesn’t mean I can’t… mourn for what I could have been outside of the monastery. It’s only natural.”

“You keep telling yourself that,” Dean snaps back, feeling like a wounded animal, cornered. Maybe he didn't want to feel this after all.

“Please, Dean.” His voice sounds smaller than it ever has, like his throat has tightened around the words, refusing to let them out. Dean turns away. He thought he could face the pain of Cas leaving him, like everyone else has left him. But he can’t. 

“Just… just go, Cas.” He turns over to the sink and starts washing dishes from breakfast. Dean steadfastly refuses to turn around, because he knew if he did he would beg Cas to stay. This was easier. 

“Right.” He hears Castiel shuffle towards the door, the rustle of cloth as he pulls on his jacket.

“Goodbye, Dean.”

The door closes and Dean lets himself break. 

\---

There’s no formal ceremony for entering the novitiate, since he doesn’t take his tonsure and is only taking temporary vows. The Abbott and Novice Director gather with him and the brethren in the chapter hall and express their happiness that he has returned and is ready for a more formal apprenticeship in the ways of the monastery. Castiel nods his head, but thinks privately that a six month tenure has little difference to one of two years in formality. After the paperwork and greetings are done, he takes up residence in the same cell as he did during his postulancy, and now wears the same robes as his brothers. He rises at the toll of the bell at five in the morning, groggy for having tossed and turned the night away. 

His feet know the path to the bathroom, though his mind is off. He fills his jug with hot water, and from that, his washbasin in his cell. After a few brief ablutions to wash the sweat of sleep away, he is ready for Vigils. The psalms are ingrained in his mind, and he can recite them without a memory aid, like most of the brothers. His voice is the lowest in the room, harsh and guttural even after half an hour of recitation. Castiel thinks it is a combination of lack of sleep and trying to keep his tears silent the night before. He can’t explain what made a life he was content with two months ago so empty now, or whose shape created the hole in his heart. 

Breakfast in the refectory is a simple affair with fresh baked bread, their own butter, honey from their apiary, and preserves made from the fruit grown in the warmer months. The monks eat whatever is in season, which, in January, meant whatever they still had in winter storage, usually root vegetables, squashes, whatever they pickled and fruit preserves. Mushrooms were available all year long, and featured heavily in lunches and dinners. 

Though brewing alcohol and drinking it was a traditional practice for the monks, the Kansas Benedictines did not share their European counterparts’ values on caffeine made from coffee. Castiel drinks his green tea strong, overbrewed to the point of bitterness, and drinks a lot of it to clear his mind. He shouldn’t have returned to his coffee habits in his time outside of the monastery. His head will ache for days as he weans himself off the substance.

The sun is peeking over the horizon in the east, blood red and ominous, streaming through the simple leaded windows of the oratory, staining the stucco walls faintly pink. 

The Father leads them through a call and response, calming voice causing Castiel to close his eyes, letting the dawn’s light wash over him, “I called to you, Lord; you are my refuge.” 

They respond in kind, a beating heart of a hundred men, sending their praises into the sky, “You are all I have in the land of the living,” The father continues.

Castiel opens his eyes, because behind his closed eyelids is not God but someone else on the earthly plane, “I called to you, Lord; you are my refuge,” they say again. Castiel tries to mean it, not to take refuge in memory but to look towards his future with God. 

“Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit.”

“I called to you, Lord; you are my refuge.” Castiel swallows around the lump in his throat, but cannot bring himself to say it< /p>

After Lauds is Lecto Divinia, an individual’s time to read scriptures and pray, which can be taken in the cell or in the church. Though often he had taken this step in the oratory, basking in the early morning sunlight, today he wants to be alone with his thoughts. 

He begins by reading Matthew 6, recalling the famous 6:13, from the Lord’s prayer “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” A frustrated part of him hopes the section on piety will help him regain his own. 

“No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.” Was coveting the life he could have lived his mammon? Did he need to be rid of thoughts of that life to serve God, or were thoughts of that life, that potential future, his test? Were they something he needed to face and overcome to find contentment? Or something he should banish from his mind as false prophecy?

Castiel cast his eyes up to the ceiling, and, for the first time in a very long time, truly prayed. He did not repeat words from the bible or the mouth of his brothers, but let a stream of consciousness flow from him to God. 

Before he knows it, he is being called to mass. His prayers went unanswered—not that he was surprised by that—but he felt lighter for having unburdened his heart. It is ten in the morning by the time the morning prayers have all been completed. The Abbot gestures to Castiel to stay behind, and he sits in silence, waiting as the oratory empties. 

“How are you feeling, Castiel?” The Abbot asks with no preemption. He has always been a very direct man, Father Murphy, his grey hair and stern mouth brooking no arguments from his flock. 

Castiel contemplates the question for a moment, not wishing to answer falsely for the sake of hastiness. “I feel better than I did before Lauds, but… I am troubled. I am less at peace than I was before I left the monastery in November.”

Father Murphy nods, thinking before speaking, “And did something occur in your time away which has unsettled you?”

There is a tightness in his throat that Castiel swallows past, “… So much happened.” _And so much didn’t._

“Castiel, I don’t want you to think that this path is something which must be… free of doubt. Even the most faithful servants of God have doubt. But this is also a lifelong commitment. We want you here, but not as a hostage.”

With that, the Abbott pats him on the shoulder and leaves to complete his duties for the day. Castiel needs to do the same, but uses the walk to the woodshop to think. He has no delusions about Father Murphy’s implication. He knows the Milton family, and their tradition. But he also knows Castiel, and has never held his family against him. If Murphy didn’t think Castiel was suited to the monastery, he would never have been admitted for his novitiate.  
He had no doubt in God; that would have been a much more serious hurdle. Doubt in himself, Castiel could manage. Thinking of Anna, his resolve strengthens.

The woodshop has been used in his month away for making wooden toys for a local orphanage, and he has to dust and re-organize before he can do anything. Some of his jigs have been cut down for other uses and he has to remake them. He inventories his paints and stains, making a note of ones he might need to requisition. His next project is to make a display case for an important rare religious manuscript, and he doesn’t even have a miter jig made. 

By the time he feels confident enough in his shop’s state to start drafting, they are called to the refectory for lunch time, followed by Sext, a short service to mark the hours. Castiel forgot how important work became when driven by such a strict schedule. He cannot be in the middle of gluing a piece when he has to leave for a meal or prayer-time. 

Quicker then he even imagined, compline approaches and with it, the end of the day. Despite his fatigue, his sleep is restless.

Every day after that is much the same. 

The seasons blend into one another. After the display case, he makes a cold frame, after that, another bookshelf. In between, he turns new rolling pins for the cooks, a batch of wooden pens for the librarians from some cherry blanks and pilfered parts. 

He had forgotten how much solace the relentless schedule gave him, and the peace of prayer and work. Of course, Castiel still thinks of what could have been, on nights where he can’t sleep. In his little spare time, he reads voraciously, studying Greek and Hebrew and Latin to challenge his mind and keep him from thinking.

It mostly works. Life goes on.

\---

Dean tries to move on. It’s ridiculous that just a month of Castiel’s presence leaves a gaping hole in Dean’s life when he leaves. He feels like a teenager, pining after a failed relationship. Except that this is nothing like that—Castiel was just a weird dude who popped into his life and gave him coffee filters for Christmas. They weren’t even close. Except that they were and he didn’t know when that happened.

He works, on other people’s cars, on his own car, and on Sam’s car, designing and redesigning and ordering custom parts like nobody’s business. He drinks, but only at home. He doesn’t go to the bar unless Ash decides they’re too good for the warm six pack of beer under his desk on Fridays after work.

Dean knows a guy who drives a car hauler and who has an extra space. Sam’s shiny new car makes the seven-hour journey from South Dakota to Kansas in late April. The lines of the car are a blend between a 1960s Triumph TR-6 body and a 1964 Pontiac GTO’s roof, painted a dark racing green. The British inspiration with Triumph was really a stroke of genius, inspired by an old James Bond flick Dean happened to catch on the television.

Sam comes home in May after his exams. Dean says it costs too much to mail Sam’s present so he’ll have to wait. He has two exams on his birthday, and Dean feels sorry for him. But Sam would never have to take a greyhound again thanks to Dean, so he doesn’t feel that bad. Dean bribes his landlord for an extra parking space for the car. 

He doesn’t do the whole big bow on top of the car thing, because that would be cheesy. Instead, when he pulls into his space after picking Sam up from the greyhound station, he waits for Sam to notice the green beauty. Luckily, Sam is John Winchester's son and no fool to boot, and whistles when he sees the car. 

“Damn! Whose car is that?” Nothing to disparage his customers, but the people of Lawrence, Kansas were not known for their affinity for beautiful cars, so she stands out.

“Yours, Sammy.” Dean says with a grin. His heart feels lighter at the surprised gasp-smile Sam lets out.

“No way, man. You’ve got to be shitting me.” Dean pulls the keys out of his pocket, complete with Stanford keychain.

They get out of the Impala and Dean enjoys Sam’s unrestrained gawking, “What even kind of car is this? I don’t recognize the make.”

“It’s a Winchester.”

“Um… what?” 

“Bobby had this Prius husk back at Christmas… Said I could do what I wanted with it, suggested that you could use a fuel efficient car.”

“Dean… you can’t possibly be telling me that this is a hybrid. This must be a classic car.” 

“Yeah, well I played with the engine a bit. Made it a little more efficient, but because the chassis is heavy it doesn’t get quite as good gas mileage as a brand new Prius… but pretty close.”

“And the body?”

“Like I said, it’s a Winchester. All my own pieces. Some of them I fabricated myself out of Frankenstein pieces. Others, I sent out to have custom-made. Was kind of a bitch, but worth it.”

“Is this… are you getting into the design business? Because you have to be. I mean this is like a perfect portfolio piece.”

Dean claps Sam on the back, “Yeah, well, I took a few pictures, borrowed Ash’s fancy camera. But it’s all yours.” 

“Holy shit.”

"Wanna take her for a spin?"

When John finds out, it’s an inevitable blow up. Bobby had been disseminating the photos among some of his contacts and the buzz is bigger than Dean ever expected. There are no offers, but a whole lot of positive interest. Someone who was interested also happened to know John and mention it, just a day after Sam gets back. 

The thing is—John doesn’t even have a real reason to be angry. Other than the two weeks at Christmas and a few of the vacation days he’s supposed to have in his contract but never usually takes, he hasn’t missed any work to work on the car. 

They don’t speak for three weeks, even though Dean is at work every day. Ash always has to tell him what a car is in for, or what service it needs, even when John just spoke to the client. 

When Dean confronts John at home, the picture is sad. John is in his undershirt, coveralls tied around his waist. He smells like a distillery. 

John sighs, sitting on the couch and rubbing a filthy hand over his face, “Let yourself in, Dean.”

“Dad?”

“What? You come here to tell me you’re leaving?”

“No, I came here to get you to talk to me because the silent treatment is getting a little annoying.”

“But you’re gonna leave. Not now, maybe, but in a few months that buzz’ll turn into a job, wearing a white collar and designing on a tablet instead of getting your hands dirty.”

“I highly doubt people Bobby knows are gonna put me there." Dean sits down next to him, moving the bottle from the couch to the coffee table deliberately, "Someone in Nebraska’s looking for some restoration work on a car that’s about rusted through. I’m gonna spend some weekends there, working on that. Maybe next month, someone in Colorado’s gonna want their roll-top turned into a real car. Nothing I can’t handle while still working at the shop.”

John scoffs with disbelief, “I’ve seen that car. I looked at that engine. If the right person looks at that, you’ll be wearing suits in a white building soon enough.”

Dean accepts that John won’t tell him he’s proud of him in a traditional way, but damn he didn’t have to turn everything into a backhanded compliment. “I’ll see you at work, Dad. Maybe lay off the whiskey.”

They exist in that stalemate for a while. The jobs he gets because of the portfolio piece are sporadic, and even with a website set up by Ash and the power of the internet, they don’t get any more interesting than someone looking for good restoration or a modification that requires design background. To be fair, he’s not charging these people nearly enough for what he’s doing--most of the other guys in the business didn't have his qualifications--but he’s happy, despite being tired from driving all over kingdom come along with working his nine-to-five job. 

Before he knows it, another Christmas and New Year have passed (he tries not to think of Cas) and it’s nearly March again. He has a rare weekend to himself, and is doing laundry and watching his stupid medical drama with a beer in hand when there’s an unexpected knock at his door. 

Two uniformed police officers are standing outside his apartment, “Dean Winchester? Son of John Winchester?” 

“Yeah?” Did John get another DUI? Why would they come to his place for that? 

“We have been informed of a vehicular accident on Route US-24 involving a truck registered to one John Winchester and a trailer truck” Dean thinks his heart stops.

“The driver of the vehicle was killed on impact. Given the age and other identifying markers, we believe the deceased is your father.” 

\---

It’s been over a year since Castiel entered the monastery as a novitiate, and he has another year to go to complete the trial run. He has a rhythm. What he cherishes most is the silence. Though monks might pad through the dormitory after eight pm, as a rule they are silent until Vigils. The time away from the tediousness of social interaction gives Castiel a sense of peace. He feels closer to God in silence than he does in praise of Him.

He is in the middle of a project, trying to get some joints glued before vespers, when one of his brothers comes tumbling into his woodshop. Luckily, Castiel is merely hand-planing a board that’s just a bit too wide and not using any power tools. 

“Father Murphy says that you are to come to his office. He says it’s a matter of some urgency.” Nothing about monastic life is ever truly urgent. Castiel feels his heart speed up in a way it hasn’t in over a year as they race through the labyrinthine halls to the Abbot’s office. 

“Yes, I can assure you Castiel is on his way.” He hears Murphy say as they round the corner to his office, “No, it is perfectly alright Mrs. Milton, I think I hear him now.” 

His mother has called him, so clearly she's fine. Who else could be hurt that she would call with such urgency?

Father Murphy wisely hands him the phone without any preamble, seeing the desperation in his eyes, “Mom? Is everything okay? Is someone hurt?” His voice sounds small and he is conscious of the two people witnessing his conversation.

“No, sweetie. Everyone’s fine. It’s just… I thought you ought to know, really, the two of you being so close.” Castiel had no idea who his mother was talking about, “Dean Winchester’s father is being buried today, at Stull Cemetery. He died a week ago, and I only just heard about it today since I was out of town visiting your brother.”

“How,” Castiel licks his lips, finding his mouth suddenly dry, “How did he die?” Father Murphy gives him a look of concern and shoos the other monk out of the room, closing the door.

“A car crash—actually I had heard about the car crash. Nasty pile-up with a semi on route 24, but no one else was hurt. I thought you would want to know right away to offer your condolences. I’m sorry for scaring you, but I didn’t think it would be appropriate to wait until our next phone call.” 

“It’s—it’s perfectly alright, Mom. You were right to call.”

“Would you like me to send your condolences? I was thinking of sending some flowers, but they’re doing a private burial and no public wake, so the protocol is unclear.”

“Um, thank you mother but the Winchesters aren’t really flowers people.” They’d probably more appreciate a bottle of whiskey, Castiel muses, “I’ll… I’ll convey your condolences along with mine. If you don’t mind.” 

“Yes, if you think that’s best.” Clearly she disapproves of the idea—it’s not exactly proper. 

“Yes, I do. Thank you. I ought to give Father Murphy back his telephone.”

“Of course! I’m so sorry. I’ll let you go. I love you, Castiel.” 

“I love you too, Mom,” He says, all too aware of their mortality after such news.

Father Murphy sits at his desk, steepling his hands, patiently waiting for Castiel to explain. 

“My friend’s father just died. He is being buried today. My mother worried that perhaps my condolences might be late, which, in her book counts as an emergency.” He says by way of explanation.

“I understand. Would you like to call them? I have to make my rounds, and you would be welcome to have use of my office for the call while I do so.” 

Castiel sits down, a little overwhelmed. He hadn’t had to make a big, emotional decision like this for a year. He felt winded and anxious at the thought. “I am afraid… my friend and I did not part on good terms. I worry that a call from me would cause more harm than good. I do not wish to hurt him further in this period of grief.”

“Was this parting because of your choice to enter the monastery?” The question isn’t barbed, yet it pierces Castiel like a lance. 

“It was… more about the circumstances of my entering the monastery. He never understood that I was content here, at peace… because despite all of our messy upsets, there were times that I was happy out there. With him. To him, these fleeting moments of happiness overwhelm the awfulness of everything else.” Castiel laughs breathily to himself. He’s not explaining it right, “He’s had a lot of loss. He’s not selfish, not in the least, but my leaving brought up a lot of bad memories, I think. It was better to him to cut off our friendship than to feel the loss fully.” 

“It sounds like you care about him. A lot.” Heat rises into his cheeks, and Castiel feels like he’s been caught in something shameful, like he’s bared a part of himself, sensitive scar tissue that’s never seen the light before.

Father Murphy sighs, “Take your time Castiel, think it through. If you want to call, my office is open to you. Perhaps… perhaps you are more like your friend than you think.” Castiel looks at him curiously, “If you want to be merely content, then, by all means, stay here. But I've been watching you Castiel, and something is troubling you. I don’t know that you’ll be at peace without resolving this.”

Castiel feels the words like a blade to his flesh and knows that they’ve struck home. “Father… I did not tell you everything. You know that my family has a long tradition of sending a middle son into monastic life. But I am not the middle son. I am a third son—my brother left and I took on his role.” Murphy’s eyes go wide, “My time away… I was reckless. I drank to excess, I was lustful, and I was wrathful to members of my family who I felt were pressuring me. My father worried I was going to do the same as my elder brother. He threatened… he said my sister would be forced to be a trappist if I did not continue my path. I do not want her to have to choose between her family and having a life. I want her to have both. I have known since I was six that this was my path, and as I said, I am content here. It is no great sacrifice to ensure my sister’s freedom.”

“And you never told me this because?” Murphy pinches between his eyes, like he’s just gotten a headache.

“I didn’t want you to think I was unfit for the monastery because of the circumstances surrounding my entry.” It wasn’t deceit, to Castiel. It was essential to protecting his sister.

“Because you were coerced to be here.”

Castiel wants to have a ready reply, wants to deny it. He can’t.

The Father sighs again, “You have taken vows, Castiel. Only for two years, but these two years are a concord between you and God. I cannot advise you to break them.” He pauses, “But, I cannot in good conscious let you stay here with this weighing on your soul. If this means as much to you as I think it does—I think you should go see your friend today. Take some time to resolve that, and talk to your family. If, after you’ve made your peace with these parts of your life, you still want to enter the monastery, of your own free will… I will not prevent you from re-entering the fold.”

“Father Murphy,” Castiel is floored, and his throat feels tight with emotion, “I am afraid… if I leave I am afraid I will not have the strength to come back.” 

“Then that is God’s will. I wish, Castiel, that you had told me these things before you took your temporary vows. But we cannot change the past, and… I’m no authority, but I think God will forgive you your trespasses, should you choose to leave today.”

Quiet enters the office as Castiel contemplates the option. An image flashes into his mind, of Dean’s false grin when he tries to be strong for the sake of others, shouldering their burdens and ignoring his own needs. “Father… thank you, for your advice and your patience. Even if I break my word with God, and even if this goes terribly for me, I think I need to go.”

“God be with you, Castiel."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey do you guys think I should mark John dying as Major Character Death? I feel like when I see that on a spn fic it means to me that Dean, Sam or Cas has died. Since he dies in the show AND he's not that big a character here I didn't mark it MCD. But please let me know what y'all think because people have had some THOUGHTS about my tags before and I am all about tag accuracy.


	11. Ashes to Ashes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Since no one knows the future,  
> who can tell someone else what is to come?  
> As no one has power over the wind to contain it,  
> so no one has power over the time of their death."  
> -Ecclesiastes 8:7-8

John Winchester dies in late February, just as the first snow crocuses have begun to pop out of the ground, stretching towards the sun’s warmth. 

It was a cold day when he dies, but not icy. The drive to Topeka to pick up a part that the client couldn’t wait to be delivered should have been perfectly safe. The accident isn’t something expected, John’s truck t-boned by a semi. Nor is it a clear case of fault for either party. The driver had been driving three hours longer than he was legally allowed, and John had a questionable amount of alcohol in his system, having stopped at a local dive to get his buzz on before driving back. The driver had whiplash and lost his job. John was dead on impact, according to the coroner’s report. Small mercies. 

The funeral is closed casket. Not even the best mortician could have made John’s mangled body presentable. Dean knows, he had to identify the body. He barely could, and then threw up for so long the doctor wanted to put him on an IV and bedrest. Sam drives back from school. Dean is never more grateful that Sam has a car than ever. There’s no insurance payout because of the alcohol in John’s system, and Dean pays the funeral costs out of pocket, nearly emptying his savings. He doesn’t tell anyone how much it costs, but Bobby leaves him a sizeable check that covers about half the cost. 

Bobby and Karen drive down from Sioux Falls for the burial. Other than Ash and a few of the drunks from around town, like Rufus, there’s no one else. They don’t so much hold a wake as go to Willy’s and get trashed and try not to talk about how he died, or how he lived for two decades after his wife died. He was a father, they say. A word is missing but Dean’s not sure he wants to fill in that blank.

To cope, Dean drinks and paces, prowling around his apartment at night like a trapped animal, going over what-ifs again and again in his mind, visions of blood on asphalt and the jaws of life haunting what sleep he does get. Sam sleeps to cope, over twelve hours a night, as if sleeping could erase his grief, a grief he didn’t even know he would feel so strongly.

They are orphans in their twenties. It’s not supposed to be this way—lightning shouldn’t strike twice, nor should tragedy. 

After the burial, he stays there for a long time, watching the hole filled, and sod planted atop the fresh earth. Six feet of dirt between him and his father. Sam drove to the burial with him, but gets a ride home with Bobby. They say goodbye there, since he has to go back to Stanford; no matter how understanding his professors are, he’ll never catch up if he stays too long.

Dean stands, for hours it seems. It’s starting to get dark when he hears a car pull up in the quiet of the cemetery, and a shuffling of feet towards him.

He turns around, expecting Bobby, coming to force him to go home and get some sleep.

“Hello, Dean.” Not Bobby. Cas. Blearily Dean’s mind supplies that Cas shouldn’t be there. 

“What are you doing here?” His voice is raw from disuse. The sun is setting. He’s been on his feet since noon, and awake since three in the morning after a fitful sleep. Part of him worries that it’s a mirage, until he can feel Cas’ breath on him. Living as a monk hadn’t improved Cas’ sense of personal space.

“I…” Cas stares at the freshly upturned dirt, the shiny new headstone, “I don’t know. I thought you could use a friend. I was in my car before I could think about it beyond that… I just knew I needed to be here.”

“Yeah, you picked a hell of a time.” Instead of the claps on the shoulder and brief hugs he’s been receiving as a token of grief, Castiel puts a warm hand on the back of Dean’s neck, pulling Dean in close to his shoulder and wrapping the other arm around Dean, enveloping him in the scent of sandalwood and ozone. His face hidden from view, tenderly lodged between Castiel’s neck and shoulder, as Castiel’s hand caresses the hairs at the nape of his neck, Dean feels his resolve start to break. 

He shuts his eyes and lets the sob escape, a choked, harsh sound that disturbs the stillness of the cemetery. Dean’s shoulders shake but Castiel remains stalwart, standing fast in the storm of his grief. His knees buckle, and Cas bolsters him, letting them slowly sink to the cold ground. Dean’s hands clench futilely at the sides of Castiel’s jacket, closed fists tight as his body releases the tension of grief, held in check for the week, first to make the funeral arrangements, and then for Sammy’s sake. 

Cas doesn’t say anything, doesn’t try to talk him down or tell him to breathe through the sobs, just lets him bawl until he’s an empty husk, all cried out. They’re quiet, as the cold of the ground leeches into them. Dean shivers, and eventually Cas bodily hauls them off the dirt, keeping him from getting too chilled. 

Dean wants to apologize for being so weak. Every fiber in his being screams out to fight, but he’s so damn tired of fighting. And Cas isn’t looking at him with pity in his eyes, but empathy. Sniffling, Dean leans over and touches the headstone, closing his eyes for a moment. 

_Goodbye, Dad._

He turns away from the stone and leans into Cas’ side, the gesture as easy as breathing. “Drive me home?”

“Of course, Dean.” 

\---

Castiel wakes up on Dean’s couch with a crick in his neck. He smiles, despite himself and despite the situation, very glad to be back in this position. He briefly contemplates sleeping a few more minutes, but his bodily clock is wired for early mornings after a year at the monastery. 

He is about to get up and make breakfast when he hears a knock at the door. Not wanting to wake Dean, he rushes over on tiptoe to answer, opening the door only a foot to peek his head through.

A gruff older man in a baseball cap and flannel with a petite woman in a yellow day dress stare at him in confusion. 

“Hello?” He says for lack of a better greeting, voice even lower and rougher from morning grogginess. 

“Who the hell are you?”

“Castiel. Dean’s friend.” He’s not even sure he qualifies for that title anymore, but it suffices as explanation. 

“You sure don’t look like a monk. Dean up yet?”

“Bobby, where are your manners,” The woman admonishes, handing her grocery bags to Bobby to stick out her hand, “I’m Karen Singer and this is my husband, Bobby. We’re family.” Castiel opens the door further to shake her hand, suddenly aware of his dress, a threadbare tee-shirt and boxer shorts. 

Blessedly, Dean seems to have been roused by the commotion, “Cas?” he hears, as well as footsteps padding through the living room. Bobby takes this as permission to enter the apartment, and bring the bags to the kitchen. 

“Oh, hey guys. I thought we were meeting for breakfast before you headed out? Cas, this is—”

“We handled the introductions ourselves, sleepyhead,” Bobby shouts from the kitchen. This early, Castiel is overwhelmed by the chaos, the newness of everything, and remains silent, slightly cowed.

Karen gives Dean a sympathetic smile, “We were supposed to meet at eight, dear. It’s almost nine. But we’re glad. You needed the sleep. And I’m sure whatever we can whip up here will be a sight better than the Holiday Inn.” There’s the sound of fumbling metal and a muttered curse word from the kitchen. “Excuse me, I better make sure Bobby doesn’t break your kitchen.”

“Sorry, Cas. Must’ve slipped my mind last night.”

“Dean,” Cas intones, wanting to smack him upside the head for apologizing, “It’s not like I was an expected house guest. If anything, I should be apologizing for making you miss your meeting.”

“Dude, I overslept, let’s not martyr ourselves over it.” 

Castiel smiles, noticing for the first time that Dean is shirtless, with sweatpants slung low over his hips. He is all too aware of the picture they must make, and feels his face flush at the thought, “I’ll go get dressed.”

Dean appears suddenly shy, “You staying for breakfast?”

“I don’t want to interrupt,” Cas demurs, worried he isn’t welcome, especially in the category of ‘family.’

“Hey, I always want you—I mean. You’re always welcome. In here.” Dean sighs, “I need coffee.” He looks to the ceiling, seemingly frustrated with his own foot-in-mouth syndrome.

Castiel smiles without teeth, “I’m starving. Breakfast sounds great.”

Dean’s hand reaches behind his head in an aborted scratch that ends up looking like an awkward over-articulated gesture, “Great.” He walks backward into the kitchen and disappears as Cas gathers his jeans up to change in the bathroom.

A cup of warm coffee is pressed into his hand by Bobby in the hallway, Castiel feeling much less vulnerable fully clothed, “Too many cooks in the kitchen,” the older man says by way of explanation, making no moves to go sit in the living room, just pinning Castiel with a lancet stare. 

Castiel stares at his coffee for a moment blearily before taking a sip, not wanting to be rude, if that’s what Bobby was waiting for. He looks up and still feels like a frog pinned down on the dissection tray. 

“May I help you?” He asks, trying his best to read the situation but failing hopelessly.

Bobby’s voice is low and dangerous, and it makes his spine stiffen, “Boy, I’m going to tell you this only once. You, popping in and out of Dean’s life at a whim? That ain’t gonna fly with me.”

Castiel’s anger and possessive nature had been hiding in the shadows for a year, and they come out in his cold tone and cutting consonants. “I came to comfort a friend in his time of need. If he didn’t want me here, I wouldn’t be here.”

“You leave for a year and only come back when he’s most vulnerable, when none of the rest of us are around? Something ‘bout that just reads fishy to me, monk-boy.”

He sighs in frustration, unable to even parse his own reasons for coming beyond instinct, “I came here at great personal cost. Because I care about Dean. If I could have come earlier, I would have.”

“You might have known to come earlier if you and Dean were on speaking terms.”

Cas feels like he might shatter the mug. He expected this kind of reaction from Dean, incredulity, anger, but instead got acceptance and thanks. He couldn’t stand the interrogation from someone who cares for Dean, because deep down, he knows that whatever it is he and Dean have, it isn’t sustainable or healthy. 

“I cannot change the terms of our last parting, I can only hope to mend their consequences now,” Castiel looks down, then finds his spine and meets Bobby’s eyes, “But if you _really_ think for a minute that I would come here to… take advantage. Then you had better punch me out. Because that’s not the kind of person I am, or the kind of person Dean would choose to be in his life.” 

Bobby makes a sound in the back of his throat that sounds like grudging respect. “I guess I’ll hold my judgement, then. Hope you like French toast.”

Dean shouts from the kitchen “Grub’s up!” It sounds so normal, so typical _Dean_ that Cas can’t help the smile that lights up his face. 

The older man is giving him an appraising look, and claps him on the shoulder, “Lord save us from ignorant men.” Castiel spends a moment appraising the sentence. It is neither a verse nor a significant quote that he can discern. Smelling syrup, he gives up and follows into the kitchen, stomach grumbling.

\---

Breakfast is only a little tense, and Dean feels like he’s saying goodbye to Bobby and Karen more quickly because he can’t help but see _Cas_ across the table and stare for a second, thinking he must be dreaming.

“You need anything, just call.” Bobby says before they drive off, giving Castiel a significant look. Dean can’t wrap his head around the interaction and puts it out of his mind. Dean watches them go, leaning on the door jamb as the car pulls out of sight, before following Cas back inside.

Cas is having more coffee, idly sipping while he cleans up after breakfast. Dean leans against the wall, contemplating the domestic scene. 

“Let’s go for a drive,” Dean says, apropos of nothing. 

“Why? Do you need something?” Castiel gives him a look of deep concern, a furrow appearing between his brows. Dean can’t help but chuckle, idly smoothing a wild cowlick.

“No… I just.” He sighs, “Don’t want to go back to work, don’t want to think about what I’m doing after this quite yet. If I drive… it’s like one of those—what’s the word—liminal spaces. I’m standing between the before and the after… and I don’t wanna hit the after yet.”

Castiel nods in a way that shows he actually understands, slowly, once, “When I am upset about something and don’t want to face it, I run. When you are upset about something, you drive.”

“This is a whole lot of upset to deal with Cas. It’ll be a pretty long drive.”

Castiel shrugs, a gesture that looks odd on him, Dean has a flash of a thought of him in a monk’s robe, “I packed a bag.”

“What about the monastery?”

“It’s been there two hundred years. It’ll be there whenever I get back.”

Dean isn’t sure he’s getting the whole story—he had assumed Castiel was only allowed out of the monastery for the day, “Back from where?” 

“Wherever you want to go,” Castiel responds.

Dean can’t think of a location, anywhere he wants to go other than _not here_ , “What if I want to go back to a week ago? What then, Cas?”

Castiel doesn’t say anything. There’s nothing to be said to something like that. 

“Do you have… permission to leave, Cas?”

“…More or less. Less, in some ways. I have already broken my temporary vows and that contract with God. Because of… circumstances, Father Murphy is willing to forgive that from his part, if, when I go back to the monastery, I am no longer there under duress.”

“Duress?”

“I never told you, I guess. I didn’t think it mattered. I was leaving either way… After I disobeyed Zacharaiah, my father said that if I did not comply, my sister would be the one to take my place, like I did for my brother.”

“Shit, Cas.”

“Don’t…” Castiel turns to meet Dean’s eyes, no longer busying himself with dishes for something to do with his hands, “Dean I’m not unhappy there. But I needed to make things right with us. And I have to figure out a way to find peace with my father.”

“Not unhappy isn’t happy.” Dean doesn’t break the gaze, and they hold each other’s eyes for a moment. Castiel turns around with a sigh, turning the faucet back on to wash a mug. 

“No one in this life is truly happy.” Castiel puts the clean mug in the dishrack, “There is always something more to achieve, another obstacle to surpass. The life I’m choosing… removes that by redefining happiness.”

“You chose it, huh? Then why aren’t you going back there? Why didn’t you just call?” Dean sidles up to him, hands crossed over chest and voice gruff, trying to catch that downturned gaz.

“It’s not that black and white, Dean.” Castiel lets out in a frustrated huff, eyes still averted, “I can be conflicted about being in the monastery and still want to be there.”

“Then why don’t you go?” Dean asks, voice softening.

Castiel pauses, meeting his eyes, clear and purposeful, “Because I can be conflicted about being with you and still want to be with you.”

Dean looks away from those earnest blue eyes, “Okay. Then let’s head out in 15, I just gotta pack.” 

“Alright, Dean.”

\---

They’re on the road in ten, twenty after picking up the Impala. Castiel cast a worried glance at Dean’s fridge and the eggs and milk that might go bad inside, but he has no idea if they’ll be gone two days or two weeks. Part of him hopes it’s the latter—the Abbot was forgiving of Castiel’s trespasses, but his father wouldn’t be so generous. 

Dean drives fast, getting them onto the highway in little time, headed in no particular direction. The tight turns and square fences of town fade away to open fields of farmland, dirt plots, and abandoned buildings. Castiel watches the scenery fly by, watching the lines of communication, telephone lines stretched across the open country like spider silk. 

The mangled corpse of some small animal, perhaps a coyote, flashes by. Castiel looks out the open window, staring at it until the bloody smear fades into the distance. He thinks about death, and the absolute randomness of the animal’s death, of John’s death strikes a chord in him. John Winchester lived an unhappy life—partially because he lost the love of his life, but mostly because he let his life be consumed by that loss. And, in turn, he had forced his sons to bear that burden as well, causing them deep unhappiness. The younger, who had never known the love of his mother, had moved away from John’s toxicity to find his own happiness. The eldest now floundered, not knowing what to do without the guiding and shaping hand of his father’s devout suffering. 

He looked over at Dean, jaw a grim line in the morning light. Part of him wanted to reach out, to smooth his hand over that stubbled cheek, encouraging the teeth to part from their grind, that jaw to relax. He forces his own jaw to open, clicking his bottom teeth around until he feels the tension dissipate.

Castiel—he had never known the idea of a _happy_ or _unhappy_ life, only the certainty of his future, and the certainty that he was at peace with it. But when he had met Dean Winchester, certainty flew out the window. Suddenly there was a kindred spirit, whose life was pre-determined by his parents just as Castiel’s was, and who seemed rebellious, hopeful for the future. Castiel thought Dean taught him too much of free will, despite Dean never exercising that for himself, only to free his younger brother from the shackles they shared. 

The highway became even straighter, a line like a gray scar cut through the land. Dean pressed on the gas pedal and sped up. 

He could see how that unhappiness weighed on Dean, the burden on his soul. The idea of free will lingered on his mind, and he grew restless. The peace he could find in prayer no longer visited him, and the only way he could drown the emptiness was in the woodshop, or sometimes observing the garden, in the warmer months. His prayer was using his hands, his peace the appreciation he held for God’s creations. Which made a good six hours of his waking day something akin to water torture. A slow death of his sanity.

But, like Dean, he had a younger sibling to protect. Anna loved her parents freely, not having had the same burden placed on her as her brothers. He did not want to burden her love, to turn it sour. Nor did he want her to have to choose between her love of theatre, her freedom of expression, and her family. She should get to have both. 

However, Anna would not appreciate him taking on that burden. She didn’t know of their father’s threat, or of his unhappiness. She thought him content—and sometimes, he was. But was contentment enough? 

He didn’t know anymore. Instead he emptied his mind, letting the fields pass them by. 

\---  
Dean wasn’t sure where he was going _Away from here_ his mind supplied, unhelpfully.

He was on a highway headed South, but that was mostly random. North would take him towards Bobby’s, West towards Sam, and East felt like a horizon he could never reach. So, South it was.

Cas sat beside him, hand trailing out the window and skipping as it was buffeted by wind, dark hair flying. It was getting dusty as they drove, and cold, but he didn’t want to close the windows. The chill of the air and the feeling of it passing over his skin soothing him in ways that were second nature from a life spent in cars.

The scenery means little to him, and he pays it no mind save for watching for upcoming hazards. What he sought was the feeling of the engine thrumming under his feet, leading up to his chest like a lightning bold, and his destiny ahead of him. For the first time in his life—he was free. Of his father’s expectations, of his job at the shop, of keeping his brother and father from imploding their little family. Yet, at the same time, he felt more burdened by responsibility than ever. Did he need to keep the shop open in his father’s stead, carrying on the family business? He certainly needed to deal with the financial outcome of whatever he did with it, but that was secondary. Was it his duty to live his life as best as possible, to surpass the life his father fashioned for himself?

He didn’t know. So he drove.

It was a good three hours before they spoke. Dean had just crossed the Oklahoma border with no more idea of where he was going than he had at the start. 

Castiel breaks the silence, “Have you ever been to the Grand Canyon?” Castiel wasn’t looking at him, but staring at the flat plains out his window. 

Dean waits a minute before answering, mouth open in thought as he shifts lanes to pass a lone VW bug going ten miles an hour under the speed limit, “Um. No? I haven’t really been anywhere.” He turns a little pink, as if ashamed. Castiel cocks his head to the side, but hums in agreement anyways.

“I think my parents might have gone, when I was really quite little. But I don’t believe they took us. Children were not considered the best travel companions, and I doubt they cared whether we experienced it or not. Either way they took their vacations during the school year, so it brooked no argument. I always wanted to go, though. We had a puzzle my mother brought back, of one of the vistas.” His eyes go glassy, like he’s far away in a memory. 

“Really? I thought you guys were all… cultured and all that.” That had always been one thing that Dean felt separated him and Cas—money. Not that Dean had been bad off. Bobby always made sure John didn’t drink away their lunch money and they could always walk down the street to Karen or Ellen if they needed a meal. But Castiel’s father was a literal steel magnate—his family had been the richest in town since the mid-1800s, and probably had been some sort of nobility before then, given their family traditions. 

“Well, I took a year in Spain and wandered around Europe for a bit. So I suppose I got a good dose of ‘culture’ there.”

“Not on your family’s dime?”

“No. Well—not really. They provided me with the funds for a two-week sojourn, anticipating five-star hotels and depravity. I merely stretched the money through frugality, and picked up odd jobs for room and board.”

Dean snorts, “Yeah, bet they didn’t expect that.”

A small smile crosses Cas’ face, “I think they learned from Lucifer that a too short leash would cause rebellion. They took my year abroad in stride, especially since I was visiting holy sites and spent three of the months on a pilgrimage. But, after that… I wasn’t allowed any more lee-way. Well, not so much anyways.” The smile turns sour, the corners of his mouth downturned.

“So…” Dean changes the subject, “You wanna go to the Grand Canyon?”

“Yes.” Castiel’s tone was decisive, “If you were looking for a liminal space, you won’t get a better one. It’s like… one of the earth’s veins. A hub and yet no-place at once. It’s testament to the power of water to cut through even the hardest of stone. A living temple.”

“I thought you were going to tell me that God carved it himself, not science,” Dean chuckles, not really surprised—Cas was never one for preaching.

Castiel smiles, a flash of teeth that Dean hardly ever sees. His voice is warm and low in the cold of the cab, like a hot cup of black coffee, “Maybe some people don’t believe in evolution, or the geological formation of the planets, because they think it contradicts their belief in the Almighty. I think the opposite: the history of this earth, the miracles and scars it carries are a road map to my belief. That the world was allowed to grow and mature at its own pace is a testament to the patience of God.” 

He listens to this, drawn in by the passion in his voice and the way his words caress the language. Dean files this away in his little book of Things About Castiel, this new insight into the way the other man thinks. Not in absolutes, or as a blind follower, but giving everything a reason, giving every theory its due diligence. 

“What about Adam and Eve? Or man being made in capital-g God’s image? It sounds like this is more some… universal force than a dude in the sky.”

Castiel laughs, and something warm coils in his belly. “Humans have been creating mythologies since the beginning—everything that is in the Bible is a parable, a guide to how Christians have chosen to worship their God, and the stories that matter to that. The Garden in Genesis is what people who had no idea how or why they existed created meaning in their lives, linking themselves back to God.”

“Careful, dude, that sounds a little too zen. They might take your robe away.”

“I was a religions major, not a Christianity or Catholicism major. I believe in the cosmic force of the universe, and the particular shape of that, for me, is God. And I find comfort in the parables those who worshipped him before me created.”

“But you don’t think Christianity is the end all, be all?”

“That would be short sighted,” Castiel frowns as if the idea had never occurred to him. Perhaps it hadn’t—he was a weird dude like that.

“Humans are short sighted,” Dean points out.

“Well then, I guess I’m above all that.” Deadpan sounds good on Castiel, but a smile twitches at the corners of his mouth. 

“Then you can just fly off to the Grand Canyon by yourself,” Dean starts, equally playful yet serious.

“Oh no, I will keep you company in this slow, human method of transportation.

Dean barks a laugh, taking the next junction to start heading west, “I’m honored.”

“As am I,” The other man says seriously, leaving the tone of humor behind. Silence overtakes the cab as the miles stretch ahead beyond them.


	12. Dust to Dust

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Well, you walk into a restaurant all strung-out from the road/And you feel the eyes upon you as you're shaking off the cold/You pretend it doesn't bother you, but you just want to explode." -Bob Seger, "Turn the Page"

Eventually their human needs require them to stop. Though they probably could have driven longer without food, they and the car are thirsty.

They do end up eating, more out of obligation than out of desire. It’s two in the afternoon and they aren’t sure how far the next town is. The diner in the tiny town is old and decrepit, much like the town it resides in—a place made for passing through.

The mauve pleather booths are cracked with age, stuffing showing through, yet they still squeak when they sit. Dean and Cas are presented with two steaming cups of coffee without asking for it by a plump older waitress. The few other patrons in the diner are rough-looking men sitting alone or in small groups, presumably from the nearby truck stop. 

Despite the potential to be bitter with such a crowd, the woman is as sweet as the sugar packets and creamers she drops onto the Formica table in front of them. “I’ll let’cha have a hot sec to look at the menu.”

Dean smiles his ladykiller grin at the older woman, “Thanks, sweetheart.” 

She blushes and mutters something, not unkind but a little disbelieving, about “sweet-talking young things who should know better.”

He’s not being flirtatious—Castiel has seen that in their college days and knows the tone—but at the same time it’s not patronizing or false. Clearly Dean did this to brighten her day—and something about that small act of kindness makes his chest warm with something beyond mere fondness.

He uses some cream and a packet of plain sugar, surprised at his first sip. It’s robust and flavorful, nothing like normal diner coffee. It’s heavenly, especially after so many months of solely drinking tea. He lets out an involuntary moan and takes another sip, despite its scalding temperature.

Across the table, Dean laughs and takes his own swallow of black coffee. The small noise of pleasure he makes is in agreement with Castiel’s assessment of the coffee. 

Despite the peeling checkerboard floors and menus filthy with grease, their dining experience follows suit from the quality of the coffee. They stay for dessert, despite not having walked in hungry, simply because it had to be divine (and it was). They drank another unnecessary cup of coffee, lingering over the peach cobbler and apple pie, before leaving a generous tip and waddling back to the car, egregiously full. 

“I know it might be anathema to suggest, but if you’re tired I can certainly drive,” he offers, unsure if it will be taken well. 

Dean shurgs, getting into the driver’s side, “Maybe tomorrow. Right now I just wanna drive.”

“So you _will_ let me drive your car,” He declared triumphantly.

“That depends—you drive stick?”

“Your car is an automatic,” Castiel points out. 

“Doesn’t matter—people who know how to drive stick are better drivers.”

Castiel scowls, “I learned how to drive on a stupid manual and got an automatic as soon as I could. Does that count?”

“Fine. I guess you’re qualified to drive her.”

“Your car doesn’t have a gender.”

“Yes, she does.” 

He rolls his eyes and leaves it be. Some battles aren’t worth fighting.

\---

They drive several more hours before stopping for the night, drawn to roost by the yellow glow of the Super8. 

“You want any dinner?” Dean asks his stoic companion.

“I think… I have broken so many vows. I want to keep one.” Castiel isn’t looking at him, but staring out the window, like he didn’t even hear Dean.

He decides the best thing to do is to keep on track, “Um… did you vow not to eat dinner?”

“Silence.” Castiel meets his eyes and it feels like his stare is burning into Dean’s soul, “We take a vow of silence—not for all the time, just at night, a period of contemplation.”

“Okay. Cool.” He doesn’t know what to say to that, “You starting now? Or you gonna answer my question first?”

“I’m not hungry after earlier. If you want to grab food, I’ll get a room while you do so.”

Dean shrugs, “Nah, I’m not that hungry either. You start being quiet whenever you’re ready—I’ll get the room.”

The room they get is on the second floor. Dean adopts silence as well, thinking _If only I can help him do this one thing—after he broke all his vows for me—to help me when I needed him most—yeah. I can deal with some quiet._

They manage the process of showering and assigning beds through gesture and assumption, knowing each other well enough to predict certain things. Dean takes the bed by the door because he has a thing about being close to fire exits. Castiel likes to organize himself and his bag before showering. Dean prefers to throw his bag on a bed and get it over with. He doesn’t turn on the TV—that would sort of defeat the purpose. From the little he knew about the monastic lifestyle, silence wasn’t just about being silent, but about emptying the mind, and that required quiet surroundings. Shitty cable was kind of the antithesis of that.

He drifts off to sleep quickly, exhausted from driving all day and the emotional turmoil of the last week.

\---

Unbenownst to him, the next bed over, Castiel is reaching into the nightstand for the ever present black-bound bible. The sound of turning pages and harsh yellow light are loud over the soft noises of Dean’s breathing, almost dissonant with the peace of slumber. Or maybe it’s just that Castiel’s thoughts are so loud it feels like he’s screaming. 

He flips through the pages, but the print is small and swims before his eyes, blurred into uneven black lines. Straining his eyes hurts in the dim lamp light and he throws the book down in frustration. Instead, he rummages in his bag, pulling out a book of poems. The text is bigger in this book, and his tired eyes catch the lines of the page he opened, “Song of the Open Road,” by Walt Whitman. 

The name rings familiar, but he can’t place it. It’s long, and his eyes skip from familiar word to familiar word, reading what interests him. The first line strikes him like a blow in the gut, “Afoot and light hearted, I take to the open road.” He and Dean were just the opposite—in a car and down trodden. 

He flips through to a different part, not feeling kinship with the poem, but still curious. 

“Now I re-examine philosophies and religions,   
They may prove well in lecture-rooms, yet not prove at all under the spacious clouds and along the landscape and flowing currents. 

Here is realization,   
Here is a man tallied—he realizes here what he has in him,   
The past, the future, majesty, love—if they are vacant of you, you are vacant of them.”

What would he be, tallied? What does he have? Not material items, but what would flash before his eyes if he died now? His mother, his siblings that he almost never saw, Dean. Regret—so much regret. But what would he regret more? Living a content life, and giving Anna a happy one, or ignoring his duty and taking a risk on his own life. A life that could be completely miserable for all he knew.

And Dean? What was the sum of Dean’s parts? A good brother, a loyal son, a friend. Pain, certainly. He had lived a life of near constant loss. But did the bright spots in that life make up for it?

Castiel didn’t know if he could take that chance. 

\---

Dean woke the next morning early, red sunrise bleeding through the window and hitting his eyes. Driving southward had shaken some of the cold out of his bones, but he still curled into the comforter, making his body small to conserve warmth. 

He pulled his phone out, powering it up for the first time in two days. There were over ten missed calls. Two from Ash, who was probably concerned what the hell he was gonna do for a job now, four from Sam, three from Bobby and Karen’s home number, and two from random numbers. He listened to the voicemails.

Like he suspected, Ash was eloquent as ever, “Yo, dude, sorry about your dad, but like… I kinda gotta know if I need to look for a new job soon before my scary landlady comes knocking. Let me know. Condolences, man.” 

He deleted the voice message and typed out a quick email to him, “Will pay for two weeks vacation while I decide what to do with the shop. If after that time you wanna look for a new job regardless, go ahead. Thanks for understanding. -D” It wasn’t super professional, but Dean didn’t really know what else to do. Ash knew the books and had gone over everything with Dean after John died, and Dean knew there was money enough for that. 

He clicked on the next voicemail, this one from an unknown number, with an area code he didn’t recognize, “Hi Dean, it’s Ellen. Harvelle. Jo and I just heard about John from Bobby and wanted to pass on our condolences. I know we’re far away, but if you ever need us, please call this number.” Dean wasn’t sure what to do with that. He hadn’t expected them to have found out, given that he cut contact with them, but it seems Bobby hadn’t. Thumb hesitating over the screen, he caved and kept the number as a contact, merely writing Harvelle for the name. 

The next call was from Bobby, dated just after they had driven away from Dean’s place, “I know we didn’t talk about this, but I wanted to offer, since Ash won’t shut up about his job security. If you want to keep the shop open for a little while you decide what to do, I can spare a week or two to help you out down there. But no one would blink if you closed—don’t worry about what your old man would think: do what’s right for you.” The next one was from him too, “Can you get Ash to stop calling me? I can’t drive with all that ringing and you know Karen doesn’t like the highway. Call me if you need anything.”

Dean ignores it for now, mentally filing it away for later while he listened to the next messages. Sam called many times, but only left one message, “Um, hey Dean. I couldn’t get you to pick up. This might seem like small potatoes right now but Bobby just told me that he came to say goodbye to find you with Cas? Maybe it’s not my place to say this but I’m worried—I don’t want you to be… hurt when he leaves again.” Dean could feel his ire rising, and panic closing in his throat. “Just… don’t get too attached. Love you. Bye.” And he deflated—Sam and him never said that at the end of phone calls. Not until John died and they realized just how precious their time on this earth was. 

And finally, a call from Bobby, “I heard you skipped town. Call me.”

The other unknown number didn’t leave a message. He absently clicked on it, not expecting someone to pick up after two rings, “Dean?” He’d know that voice anywhere, and froze just hearing it, “Is that you brotha?”

Carefully, he toed over to door, uncaring of his state of undress, and popped outside, leaving his shoe to prop the door open. “Benny?” All sorts of people were coming out of the woodwork with John’s death.

“Yeah, I’m sorry to bother you, I just heard about your dad… and I thought I oughta call.”

“Um, no, yeah, that’s really kind of you. To call.”

“To tell you the truth I kind of panicked when I heard your voice. Didn’t even realize it was your message thing until I’d hung up.” 

“Why, I make you nervous or something?” Dean chuckled into the receiver, unsure why he sounded breathy. 

“Well… yeah. I went to NOLA and you never contacted me again. I wasn’t sure if I had done something wrong or if you was mad I went back to my girl.”

“I wasn’t… I’m not good at keeping in touch. Ask anyone. Besides, why would I be mad about that part?”

The line went silent for a moment, before Benny let out a big exhale, “Brotha, I think that’s a question only you can answer for yourself. I’ll just remind you of all the times we shared a dorm-standard twin bed.”

“Yeah, after we shared a bottle. Not exactly abnormal.”

“Maybe I read the situation wrong… but we were, I think, a bit more than friends, in a few ways. At least on my end. That’s why I had to go back. I didn’t want to be unfaithful… and I was sorely tempted. I thought I wasn’t alone in that feeling. But I could be wrong.”

Dean’s mouth went dry. It was way too fucking early for this. 

“Look, it’s all in the past now,” Benny started, “I’m married now, and… it was just you. No one else, no guys, really interested me in that way.”

What the hell was he supposed to say to that? “Um, congratulations. Everything in the past… let’s put it all down to hormones.”

“So… I wasn’t alone? Even if it was just hormones?” 

Dean paused, eyes screwed shut. He would never say this in person. He would never say this if John were alive. “Yeah, Benny. I felt it too.” The silence was heavy for a minute, “Alright, man. Thanks for calling. It… was good to hear your voice.”

“You too, brotha. Sorry, again.”

“Thanks,” He said, just as the dial tone rang out. He shoved the offending phone in his pocket and scrubbed a hand over his face. The room was still silent, and the small Texas panhandle town hadn’t quite woken up yet. 

He decided to call Bobby. If he could survive that phone call, he could do anything. The phone rang for a while, before a grumpy voice sounded over the line, “Hello?”

“I wake you?” Dean asked, reading the disgruntled tone.

“No, I just always sound like I ate a goddamn frog, of course you woke me! It’s barely six and dark as tar out there!”

“Sorry, Bobby, it’s light where I am. And I thought I should return your calls.”

“Yeah, well Ash finally stopped calling. No thanks to you.” 

“I just turned my phone on this morning, sorry.”

“So… you leave town alone or…?”

“I’m with Cas.”

“You sure that’s such a good idea?”

“Cause last time it took you like a month to get attached to him like a limpet and you still ain’t right? Be _cause_ you ain’t got the sense to stay away from people that leave you in the dust?”

“I’m not a teenage girl, Bobby. You wanna protect someone’s frail heart go bug Sammy.” 

“Sam’s got more sense ‘bout his own emotions in his pinky than you do in that big ugly head o’ yours.” 

“Thanks for the pep talk, man, really helping the grieving process.”

“Well, I’m sorry that I don’t want to sweep up the pieces when your monk goes back to where he’s supposed to be.”

“Hey, no one swept up any pieces—I dealt.” He felt his voice getting louder, sounding defensive.

“You dealt by working yourself to the ground and hoping nothing got back up! It’s a miracle _you_ didn’t die in a car accident driving back and forth every weekend to work on Sam’s car! Do you think I’m _blind,_ boy?” Bobby was yelling now, responding to Dean’s tone and escalating it. “I see it, the same look on your face as your daddy looked at your mama. And I don’t give a damn who you chose to love… so long as they don’t break you.” 

“That’s not…” Dean’s voice shook. He couldn’t say anything more. 

“Look son,” Bobby sighed, “John’s dead. And there’s a lot of good that died there, but there’s also a lot of bad blood that died with him. Don’t let being the man your father raised you to be stop you from being the man you want to be.”

“You gonna write that on a book jacket?” 

“Shuddup. Take some time to figure out what you wanna do with the shop.” The _what you wanna do with your life_ hung unsaid in the air. 

“Yeah. Okay, Bobby… Thanks.” The word came out of him, unbidden. 

He closed the phone and stared at the horizon again, now a harsh blue sky with a scattering of pink clouds, serene yet blazing bright in his tired eyes. In the back of him, he hears a rustling, and tears himself away from the vista to open the door and sneak back into the room. 

Castiel pulled the covers over his head as sunlight streamed into the room, groaning pitifully. A chuckle rose out of his throat in response to the fluffy black head of hair poking out from the ugly duvet.

“You’re just a ray of sunshine, aren’tcha?” Another muffled moan, vaguely sounding like _fuck you, Dean_. 

If it had been Sammy, like all the times they had hid away at Bobby’s or shared the room in the apartment above the shop, he would have thrown a pillow (or something harder) to piss off the lump under the covers. Instead something soft and warm inside his heart opened up and all he wanted to do was card his hands through that messy, soft hair. 

_Goddamnit, Dean._

\---

He woke with no awareness of where he was, except for the soft murmuring of a familiar voice, comforting like a lullaby. The bed wasn’t comfortable, but he was warm. Blearily, he let some of the words flood in. At first they were quieter, almost furtive. Then there was a gap of some time and the electronic pressing of buttons, then the tone was different, more familiar, and then like he was hearing something he didn’t want to hear—a sound Castiel knew too well.

It was quiet for a while and then, “Yeah. Okay, Bobby… Thanks.” Castiel wonders what they argued about, but couldn’t tell from hearing half of Dean’s side of the conversation.

He felt like an eavesdropper, but knew he couldn’t glean anything from having just woken up, and Dean had left the door open. Sunlight hit him like a punch in the face and he shielded himself with the covers.

“You’re just a ray of sunshine, aren’tcha?” 

“Fuck you, Dean.” He said, the words stifled by the heavy duvet the low growl of his morning voice.

Castiel feels the bed move, and the warmth of another body sitting upright next to his. He peeks his eyes above the covers, still seeing phosphenes from the bright sunlight earlier. Dean smiles behind the bright spots in his vision, abstracted in light. 

Dean’s hand reaches over his vision, rubbing his head fondly like one would a beloved puppydog or younger brother. The touch lingers a moment longer as Castiel blinks the sleep out of his eyes; it’s so minute, he might have imagined it, the strong hand gentling and pulling away, thumb caressing the shell of his ear as it did. 

Yes. He must have imagined it. “You wanna go get some grub or you gonna be a slug for a little longer?” Fingers tugged at the edge of his coverlet, teasing.

“hmmm ‘m not a slug.” Cas edged his fingers into the cold air, tugging the cover back over his head, trying to dislodge Dean’s hands. The warm hands fell away from the edge, slowed with what Castiel wanted to think was reluctance. 

“Sounds like something a slug would say. ‘M gonna go grab coffee.” Castiel sensed another small hesitation, like Dean wanted to say or do something else, before the weight lifted off the bed again. 

Castiel sighs and flips the covers down with a huff. Part of him wants to sleep in while he can, but most of him wants to make the most of every moment with Dean. “Give me a minute. I’m coming.” It’s the first clear thing he’s said all morning, yet it sounds petulant at worst and reluctant at best.

“Yeah, all right.” Dean smiles at Castiel, who is too busy stumbling trying to get in his jeans the wrong way around, “I gotta brush my teeth anyways.” 

\---

There isn’t much to Dumas, Texas. He asks the guy at the motel’s front desk where he can find a good cuppa, and finds himself sent straight to Main Street, looking for a sign that said “Down Home Quilts,” for a store that mostly ended up being a sweet store but also sold decor. Having found himself in many a Midwest town where the local mechanic’s wife was also the local baker, and the local café also the local antique store, he wasn’t too put off. Most of these places that were a combination of passions were where the best food was. 

Despite the mostly empty parking lot, there are a few older patrons inside, more than the cars in the lot. Though the building is a typical one, probably built in the 1960s to be a hardware store or for some other utilitarian purpose, the interior is predictably kitschy, with eclectic, mismatched chairs and shiplap walls. A few old biddies raise their eyebrows and unsubtly nudge each other when he and Cas walk in. It’s not small, nothing is small in Texas, but it reminds him of something one would find in a city, with its industrial pipe accents, brick walls, and open ducting. He takes in the interior for a moment, before noticing that Cas hasn’t moved past the door.

Castiel, despite looking ruffled and handsome enough for the women to take notice, still stares blankly out into space. Dean snaps in front of his face, “Dude, you just started drinking coffee again and you’re already doing the zombie act?” 

Blearily, Castiel responds in a full sentence, “I perform my morning rituals by rote. I don’t have to be awake.” Dean rolls his eyes and moves past it, slapping him on the back and pushing him towards his clear goal: coffee. 

They walk up to the counter, bypassing the frou frou displays of stationary and tee shirts, and one of the ladies slips out of her seat at the table to help them. “Mornin’ boys, what can I do you for?”

“Coffee, to start.” Dean says, with a smile to match hers, “What do you recommend for a good breakfast before we hit the road?”

“Just passin’ through? Well, then you’ll have to try our famous cinnamon rolls, or our glazed donut muffins. Then I’d say take some lunch with you for the road—you don’t get food like this at gas stations.”

He didn’t have to be convinced—they got almost of one of every muffin and a cinnamon roll to try for breakfast, and Dean was more than planning to order their lunch there too.

Castiel quickly wakes up with the infusion of caffeine and sugar, “This reminds me of my brother’s shop,” he says, licking glaze off his fingers. Those cinnamon rolls were famous for a reason. 

“The sex shop?” Dean whispers, brow wrinkled in confusion.

A patented Castiel eye roll greets the question, “No, the bakery. Different pastries of course—much more French stuff than American. But still, the brick, the mismatched chairs… It wouldn’t be out of place in Montreal.” 

“Wait, I thought your brother owned a sex shop. Am I remembering our conversation right?”

“Technically, he co-owns both with his partner, Balthazar. They operate under two business licenses out of the same shop. Very separate of course, for sanitary reasons.” Dean hears a murmur of shock from somewhere to his left.

“…And I thought your family was weird for entirely different reasons.” Castiel kicks him under the table, not gently. There’s another little tremor of high voices whispering in response.

Dean can feel the prying eyes of the little old ladies sipping their coffee. He’s certain they’ve got their hearing aids turned up to eavesdrop given the way they’re leaning towards them and patently pretending to be interested in a quilt pattern they’re passing around. 

“Perhaps your family has occupations that are more statistically ‘the norm’ than certain members of mine…”

He grins into his coffee, “Well, a monk and a mechanic walk into a bar…”

“Ha. Ha.” Castiel steals the last bite of the lemon blueberry muffin Dean had unofficially claimed as his, over Dean’s vocal protest.

“I guess I deserved that.”

“What does your mom think, of your brother’s business?”

“It seems like she’s really proud of him. Opening a business with someone he was dating, she wasn’t so keen on.”

Dean’s jaw clenches and something unknown in his chest huddles against itself “What, like his business partner was his partner partner?”

He hears tut-tutting from nearby. Perhaps this wasn’t the best subject smack dab in the Bible Belt, “Is again. According to his last letter at least. They have an… on again off again relationship.” 

“And which part of that was your mother not happy about?” He was kind of curious—it’s not like Dean’s mom was around to care about that sort of thing, if it were an issue. 

Castiel raises an eyebrow at him, probably misunderstanding his reasoning for the question, “Mostly the business risk. Part of the investment was her money, and she seemed to disapprove of adding insult to injury should the venture fail, as many new businesses do. They do well now, but that doesn’t mean that they couldn’t easily break up the business the next time they break up. Truth to tell, it concerned me too, as his older brother. But I’m certainly not one to judge.”

“Yeah. You had an interesting time then, hanging out with all his kinda folks?”

“Hipsters, you mean? They are kind of a rare breed in Kansas, but it wasn’t too different to being back in university.” Dean isn’t sure if Castiel is being deliberately obtuse or giving him an out to what probably sounded like an extremely bigoted line of questioning if one wasn’t in Dean’s head—where he was still freaking out.

He took the out given to him, “Yeah, hipster Canadians. Not really the usual crowd at Willy’s.”

“Far from it. Then again, I don’t think anyone goes to that dive for the crowd.” Nope, that much was true. They went to drown their sorrows. _And isn’t that just how we met again?_

Dean coughed uncomfortably into his fist and took a sip of his coffee. This trip had been a bad idea—and Dean had known it to an extent when he suggested it. But this morning’s conversations reminded him exactly why he never let himself get close to Cas in the first place, all those years ago—Dean knew the moment he saw the other man that he might fall again, without realizing it, like he had before.

He had never been the most in touch with his emotions—and had trained himself out of seeing the signs, blindfolded himself against the feelings that lurked when it came to other men. First Benny, when Dean was fresh out of high school and on his own for the first time, finally able to escape his father’s head games. Then Cas came along and he brushed off the feelings again, and Dean stopped the friendship in its tracks: he didn’t need to get close to someone who would leave him again. 

But when he had seen Cas in that bar he knew he had a second chance, that he was older now and could have a friendship with someone without letting that pesky other feeling intrude and push them away. _And look how that worked out for you._

Dean hadn’t stopped thinking about him since that cold winter morning Cas left for the monastery last year. It was familiar, like the day Benny had left, except what he felt for Cas had deepened in their short time together, spread below his skin like a tree’s roots under concrete, cracking all the barriers he had built.

There was no reason to get his hopes up, though. Cas didn’t feel that way about him—Cas was good and pure, not like him.

The sweetness still lingering on his tongue turned sour like his thoughts.


End file.
